MAGGIE'S LAST RIDE

Maggie Buck McClennan's remains arrived from Alaska by United Parcel Service.

Her granddaughter Anne, my wife's cousin, still lives there. Anne, her mother Margaret, and Maggie left Virginia for Alaska soon after the death of Maggie's husband in 1963. We get a Christmas Card from Anne every now and then, and sometimes it includes a short note, but that's the extent of our contact.

When the UPS driver handed us the package that morning, Nancy looked at the label and said:

"What in the world.. ?"

Now anything at all from Anne would have been a surprise, but we were stunned when we removed the wrapping. It was a box about twelve inches square and there was a note taped to the top:

"Dear Nancy, Grandmother always said she wanted to be buried next to Grandfather in Norfolk. I've kept her ashes all these years and it looks like I'll never make it back to the East Coast so I'm dumping them in your lap. Hope this won't be too much of a burden. Thanks, Anne"

"Unbelievable!" I said.

"Not to me, that's just Anne." Nancy replied.

"Do you have any idea where your grandfather's buried?" I asked.

"I know he's somewhere in Norfolk, but I have no idea which cemetery," she replied. Then, with a devilish gleam in her eye, she said: "Why don't we just put Grandmother under the Lilac bush in the backyard?"

No disrespect was intended and the comic relief was just what we needed at the moment. We laughed at the situation and she said: "We really are bad aren't we?"

We finally decided that someday we'd try to find where her grandfather was buried and see what arrangements could be made with the cemetery to have her grandmother's ashes buried near his grave. Meanwhile, we needed a place to store them. We're not overly superstitious, but somehow the idea of keeping human ashes in our house would have been a little spooky.

We were living at the time on what had once been, around the turn of the century, a large produce and vegetable farm. We'd recently moved into the old Victorian house and were in the process of gutting and rebuilding it. There were several outbuildings still standing and one of them had an old root cellar below it. It was certainly deep enough to serve as a temporary crypt, so I suggested we put the ashes down there until we could take them to Norfolk.

A set of stone steps led down to the heavy cellar door. Spiders had spun webs across the walls of the stairway and a really huge spider, the kind that "writes your name" on it's web, was directly in my path. I'm not fond of bugs in general, but I really, really hate spiders. Armed with a long stick I found outside, I returned to the stairway and bravely attacked the webs.

The cellar was dimly lit from a small ray of sunlight shining down the steps and it smelled old and funky inside. The floor was damp and there was a lot of debris and animal scat. There were storage shelves standing against the walls and fortunately they were dry. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, I saw what I thought was an old snakeskin at my feet. This was definitely not the place for me. I quickly sat the box on one of the shelves, closed the door and bolted up the steps. My skin was crawling with imaginary spiders, bugs and snakes.

For several weeks, we regaled our friends with the story of our bizarre UPS delivery. Then the weeks passed into months and we gradually forgot about the ashes in the cellar. Almost two years later, Nan received an invitation to her 40^th high school reunion in Norfolk. That's home to both of us, and though we attended different high schools, we eventually met, fell in love, and were married there.

On a cloudy afternoon a few weeks later, we were packed and about to leave on our five-hour drive to Norfolk, when Nan suddenly remembered the ashes.

"Mike," she said, "I guess we should get Grandmother out of the cellar and take her with us."

"Oh Yeah," I said, "...thats right! I had completely forgotten about them."

I really hadn't, and secretly hoped I'd never have to go down there again. But, keeping my intense dread to myself, I headed for the cellar. Same time of year, same ugly spiders. This time, however, it was an overcast day and when I opened the door, it was pitch black dark inside.

Returning with a flashlight, I shined the beam on the box of ashes. As I reached for them, I dropped the light and was instantly cast into total darkness. Frantically using my foot to feel along the floor, I was relieved to find it just a few feet away. As I reached down to pick it up, I heard a horrible, hissing noise behind me.

The hair on my neck prickled and a shiver tingled down my back. Quickly tightening the loosened end of the flashlight, I turned it back on and shined the beam in the direction of the noise. I saw a pair of glowing, red eyes staring back at me.

Even though the ashes had not magically transformed into grandmother's ghost, the bared teeth of a large possum was menacing enough. In the corner behind her was a nest of kits, and she was ready to defend them against all intruders.

When I returned to the car with the ashes, Nan said:

"Find them O.K. Hon?"

"Yep." I said nonchalantly, "No problem. By the way, there's a cute little mamma possum and a litter of kittens down there."

"Oh!" she said, "I want to see them when we get back!"

(Me and my big mouth), I thought.

Nan's reunion was great fun, and the next day we got out the phone book and looked up the numbers of all the cemeteries in town. The very first cemetery we called said that there was indeed a record of Nan's grandfather, and that he was buried at Forest Lawn on Granby Street.

Mr. Clark was an odd looking little man with large, thick glasses and he peered up from his desk as we entered the Forest Lawn office. We told him who were, who we were looking for and that we had been told the grave was here.

"Well," he said, "if it is, I should have a record of it here in the files."

One entire wall of the cemetery office contained chest high file cabinets, the kind that stores index cards, like those in a library. A few minutes later he said "Here we are, the grave is just a short distance from here. I can walk over there with you if you like."

We were disappointed when we saw the grave had no marker and we resolved to correct the situation on our next trip. Later, back in Mr. Clark's office, we learned that we could leave grandmother's ashes and he would see to the proper disposal. He explained that an auger would drill down almost to the top of grandfather's coffin and a special container for her ashes would be lowered into the hole. The total cost would be only $100.

So, we finally disposed of the ashes and did so with dignity for Nan's grandmother. They were finally at rest after waiting almost thirty years and traveling halfway around the world.....And I would never have to go back into that cellar again. Maybe Nan would forget about the little possums.