The Gravestone of Franciszek Maczynski

Confession time: for years now I have been bothered by something I did on behalf of my Grandma and it's time to come clean.

Round about the turn of this century my Grandma became convinced that the gravestone of her brother would be stolen and sold for scrap. This was a  large metal cross that marked the grave of her six year old brother who'd passed in 1913, a full ten years before her birth. I'd gone with my Grandpa to paint and maintain it once upon a time and was very familiar with it.

There had been reports at the time of vandals hitting local cemeteries, but the more I talked to her the more I became convinced that this was largely a product of the paranoia that sometimes comes with age. [and possibly a result of the whispered suggestions of meddling family members.]

But it was upsetting her greatly, and she began to ask me to remove the marker before it came to harm. I refused, and refused, and refused. Finally one day a family member said my Grandma had told the cemetery she'd be replacing it with a common granite marker. I was again asked to remove it, and this time I agreed.

So in the middle of the day, in broad daylight, I attacked the cement anchor of the tombstone with a shovel and then pulled it out of the ground by myself. Looking back, I don't know how I managed. It was very heavy and still partially attached to the cement base. I was able to get it back to my car only with great difficulty.

Let me reiterate: everything was on the up and up. I'd been asked to remove it by one of the sole remaining relatives, allegedly with the approval of the cemetery office. The trouble is I didn't believe it. I was sure that my Grandma, all her wishes aside, was confused and had not/would not have been able to organize that effort. She was never senile, but she did have moments of time and areas of interest that were dominated by confusion and memory lapses.

It is a failing of my character that I did not have the stamina to brave the woman's tears and investigate her request.

Aside from that I am superstitious, and for years now whenever I drive by that cemetery I felt creeped out and wouldoften be filled with regret. Ok, let's be honest. Laugh if you will, but I've always felt it was a mark against my soul.

So when the family moved last month I came across the tombstone in the garage and my heart sank. An omen, to be sure. I could not let it slide any longer. I stopped helping my parents and with the help of my nephew loaded it into my car. [my memory of its weight was accurate. It was a bear.]

The cemetery office was closed that late on a Sunday. So my nephew and I carried it through the empty chill of the mausoleum and left it outside the office door with a note and my phone number.

It's now midway through the month so I called the office myself to see if it had been reinstalled. The office manager got on the phone and wasn't happy. Not for the reason you're thinking, however. No, she was annoyed that we'd returned it at all.

She clearly remembered speaking with my Grandma about removing the cross and (unofficially) agreed with her assessment of the risk if it had remained in the ground. To deter scrap metal collectors the cemetery had enacted a no-metal tombstone rule and her brother's grave was one of the few grandfathered markers that had survived.Of those remaining it was one of or the largest and well maintained - a perfect target. In fact I learned from the cemetary that the marker had been shipped in from Poland by my family and was deemed irreplaceable by the office.

{Time after time I find evidence that my Great-Grandparents appear better off financially then the generations that followed, despite being first generation Americans}

And so a tremendous burden was lifted, seemingly miraculously, in just a few minutes on the phone.

But by returning it we put her in a bind. It could not be put back, because by officially removing it it voided the grandfather-clause. And I was right about one thing. My Grandmother had either never made plans for a new marker or at least never followed through with a purchase. The grave has gone unmarked for the better part of a decade.

I asked about the price of a new marker, still feeling like I owed the kid a debt. If it could be classified as a child's grave, ~$550. But my great-grandparents had also pulled out all the stops to have him buried in the adult section of the cemetery, where the markers were more elaborate and better maintained. Thus the cheapest marker could be as high as ~$700. Again, it all depends on how the site would be re-classified.

If I go ahead with a new marker I'd obviously pass the hat around the family. It might be hard, given that he died 95 years ago and outside of his sole remaining sibling (now in his 90's and in a nursing home) few people have an emotional stake in the matter.

But like Lisa said when I told her later in the evening "We have to get a stone. It's not right to leave family in an unmarked grave." In the meantime the cemetary agreed to temporarily put a simple wooden cross on the gravesite.

Maybe by the spring this matter will - no pun intended - be put to rest once and for all.