Cape Cod Grave Digging: Before I Forget to Remember

I love this photo of Rite; image from dignitymemorial.com.

Photo of Bob & Rite, also via dignitymemorial.com.

Last Friday evening, when Punch was at a Brewster pond with her friend, Dan was on Washington Island off the Wisconsin coast, and Fig and Florida Orange were trying to get an earlier flight from Palm Beach to Boston for their Cape weekend, I went to the cemetery to find Rite and Bob Bremner.

I've written about Rite [Marguerite] and Bob before. They were formative in me getting to the Cape and loving it for over 50 years. Co-workers of Dad’s, they owned the cottage my parents rented--on Windmill Lane over by Great Pond--starting when I was about 4.

Eventually, they retired to the sandy shore full-time, inspiring my parents to have their simple ranch house built in the same town, North Eastham.

I cherished them. They didn't have kids--I think they wanted to--but over the years, had a dog and later, a fat cat they adored. They loved to read thick books (she, romance; he, history) and walk by Wellfleet Bay, gathering wild lavender and pretty shells. I learned so much from them. Rite gave me her zucchini bread recipe in high school. Since our house has no phone 📞 line, Mom sat by the bay window in their kitchen to call Dad when she and I stayed a full 3 weeks. I can see her now, white peasant blouse and flowy skirt, cradling the receiver.

Rite and Bob came with us on a ferry day trip to Martha’s Vineyard and a car ride to Provincetown in the 1970s. We went to the chowder supper at their church on Route 6. My friend Nancy Blake stayed at their house with me in a room with twin beds, nubby bedspreads and carefully tended African violets on a plant stand, basking in the sun. Rite made me my first Fluffernutter--lovingly packed for a day by the bay--and pan of fudge from the recipe on the Fluff label. To this day, I buy a jar of the old-timey white marshmallow magic on Cape trips to fix sandwiches for the young girls in my midst. It's just one timeless gift Rite left me.

After Mom died, R & B taught the art of clamming to Dan and me when we were newlyweds, raking in the damp bay sand at low tide before dawn, unearthing hard-shelled quahogs. Rite pushed baby Figgy with me in a bright blue stroller on Wonderstrand Way. Whenever we went to their house on Quail Cover Lane for dinner, it was always served on their wedding china. When Dad and I took them to dinner with young Figgy, they chose the Hearth 'n Kettle.

They left their house to their nephew, who promptly moved in with his family. By the end of their lives, Rite and Bob were living at a facility in Chatham. After Rite went, Bob stopped eating. Told me he didn't want to live anymore the last time I saw him. They had been married for 68 years. Rite died October 21, 2014 and Bob followed just over 8 months later, on June 26, 2015.

When I drove by the house, their nephew told me they were buried in the cemetery across from Arnold's Lobster & Clam Bar.

I had looked for their grave a few years ago with Sis, but couldn't find it. Now I looked again, covering a lot of ground in my crystal flip flops and Maggie's Organics lilac-top dress. It was sunny and hot, near 7 p.m. A shirtless, sunburned man [with a stark white T-shirt outline] was walking his big dog and talking on his cell.

Give me a sign, I said to R & B. Some kind of a sign. Help me find you.

I thought of Bob's gangly frame, Rite's petite figure, the pretty black pumps and tailored red jackets she wore when they came to visit my parents the day after Christmas every year and went into NYC. I remembered Bob liking the fried oyster platter from Arnold's, and the way Rite called me Ali. And the time Moey and I drove up to the Cape in our twenties, had car trouble, and I asked Bob to look at it. He slid underneath.

They liked gardening--and gave me two painted stone chickens to put in our garden at home. I gave one to my friend Anne. The other, worn but sturdy, is out front here in Montclair.

I couldn't find their grave. I wanted to pay my respects. But Carolyn, who lives up there and walks her older, blind dog, Finn, at the cemetery, noticed me wandering and offered help.

Bremner, she said. I know I've seen that name. She took my cell number and said she will text me when she comes across it again.

I saw BREWER. HIGGINS. MAYNARD. ELDREDGE. Touching mementos left on the gravesites--toy cars, little sailboats. Extensive gardens around some graves, complete with iron benches. Angels, cherubs.

And a plot and stone for NICKERSON. That's a big name on the Cape--Nickerson State Park, etc. I saw the grave for NATE, the original Nate. Nate III is the owner of immensely popular Arnold's, with its looooong lines and awards in Cape Cod Life Magazine.

I came up empty but still, I felt closer to Rite and Bob, and Mom and Dad. I was always young to them. And I still felt young searching for those final resting places in the sandy Cape Cod soil.

Good night.

$ MONEY SPENT OUT OF POCKET

TOTAL DAILY SPEND: zero
TOTAL MONTHLY SPEND AS OF AUGUST 14: $1,854.59.

AVERAGE DAILY SPEND FOR MONTH SO FAR: $132.47.

[I added in all Cape and travel days now.]

Hot, big-money spends in August, or how I spent our bread:

🥖 Fill gas tank twice on Cape Cod, $46 x 2= $92.
🥖Idle Times bike shop rental for Punch from noon Saturday until 5 p.m. Sunday, $31.
🥖T.J. Maxx, four designer dresses, Adidas sneakers, knock-off lightweight Burberry scarf, Olga bra, Lauren pillow, shorts, etc. etc.,  $338.

🥖Pizza+/fancyish restaurant dinner with Punch after swimming in pond in Brewster until after 7 p.m., $77.

🥖Mac's Market & Kitchen, lobster, clams, kale salad, mango salsa and other Sunday dinner ingredients, $53.

🥖Brewster bakery, including cookbook I somehow lost, maybe a message from God because it was packed with recipes for sweets, $25.
🥖2 Massachusetts mugs, one for Cape and one for home, $28.
🥖Commando.com, black half-slip, $65.
🥖Arnold's Lobster & Clam Bar, fried clam belly basket plus tip, $30.
🥖Pure Vita, the new CBD [not for me] and natural home care store with essential-oil bar and pretty pineapple throw pillow case for Cape house, votive candles, seaweed/lavender bath sachets, $52.
🥖Stop & Shop, Cape groceries, $29 + $40 + $52=$121.
🥖Lobster roll supper with P. at Adams Lodge in Wellfleet, $32.
🥖Eastham info booth, pink sweatshirt, $30.
🥖Mass Audubon annual family membership, $65.
🥖Sunbird breakfast sandwich w citrus mayonnaise on grilled ciabatta plus expensive coffee beans from, of all places, Portland, Maine, plus tip, $27.

🥖Audubon gift shop, small turtle rug for home; bird gift for Figgy; goat milk body wash; Bee Boss Body Balm, which I love for lips, too; small owl wall calendar for family, with member discount, $88. 
🥖Vineyard Vines, candy-pink gingham skort, orig $98, now on sale for $68.99, plus shipping, $79.
🥖Mac’s Market & Kitchen, lobster, scallops, salmon, lemon, cornbread square, crackers, $49.

COMPARISON SHOPPING. That long Cape Cod vacay in August really drove the numbers up so far.

TOTAL SPEND FOR MONTH OF JULY [STARTING JULY 5; I LOST A FEW DAYS THERE]: $1,610.81. 👛 🎯 ⬇️
JULY AVERAGE DAILY SPEND: $59.66!  👛 🎯 ⬇️

TOTAL SPEND FOR MONTH OF MAY: $2,348.24.

MAY AVERAGE DAILY SPEND: $75.75. 

TOTAL SPEND FOR MONTH OF APRIL: $3,634.28.

APRIL AVERAGE DAILY SPEND: $121.14.