Cemeteries

April 11, 2012 © Frank H. Jump

The image above was taken in April of 2012 during my mother’s last trip to the Netherlands. On this day we visited the gravesite of where Willy’s parents were buried and to relinquish the contract with the Nieuwe Ooster cemetery for the upkeep and claim to this burial place.

So much of your life could change in one day. As world events rapidly unfold we witness tragedies of single lives being unravelled by violence or unmitigated circumstances. The beheading of a long-captive journalist by Islamic militants. The loss of a son to unwarranted police actions in Ferguson Missouri. The disappearance and subsequent destruction of Malaysian passenger planes. The disinterment of your parents after over forty years of undisturbed rest. The relinquishing of a long-kept and valued domicile. All of these events have gone by unnoticed – not due to callous disregard or indifference but due to a neurodegenerative disease. Willy has dementia – Alzheimer’s disease – and lives very much in the moment. She no longer watches television and has no reference point as to what day it is or what is occurring locally or abroad.

On April 11, 2012 – we had trouble locating my grandparents’ gravesite. Frustrated, Willy was sure the headstone was laying down and I knew from online images that the stone stood upright. We walked in circles. We talked in circles. A young rooster nearby also traced a circular path. Finally we came upon an outdoor structure, a rectangular room in the middle of what I thought Willy’s parents grave should lie. The door had a mirror reflecting the illusion of passing time in the outside world. I could hear familiar music coming from within. It sounded like a Burt Bacharach song. On closer approach, I was sure it was Dusty’s voice singing the theme to the film Casino Royale- The Look of Love. We entered the oversized shack and the only light illuminating the darkness was from a projected moving image of dancers on a screen and a circling disco ball. We inspected all corners of the room and after silently accessing we were alone with these ghostly dancers, I turned to my mother and lifted my arms and we danced cheek to cheek while being serenaded by the late Ms. Springfield.

My mother’s maiden name is Broekveldt which loosely translates to Pantsfield. She married Harold Jump and became Willy Jump. ‘Jump’ in Dutch is “spring.” Dusty’s name is a hybrid of both of Willy’s given and married surnames. So here we were in the early Dutch spring, dancing together in the flickering light of ghostly dancers in an art installation in the middle of a cemetery.

In the video installation Tonight from the Brazilian artist Valeska Soares, people dance in an empty dancehall with an invisible partner. With the romantic tones of Burt Bacharach’s The Look of Love, glides lonely dancers through an endless reflecting space, sometimes encountering each other and moving immediately apart. It is a poetic, melancholic film that explores the loneliness one experiences following the loss of a loved one. They dance with the invisible partner, which is present in the memory. A memory that makes one happy. Tonight is filmed in the ballroom of the famous complex Pampulha in Belo Horizonte designed by Oscar Niemeyer in 1943.

The song ended and we emerged from this phantom-shrouded love shack to continue our search for my mother’s parents interred remains. We made a right turn, walked fifty feet towards plot number 42-3-0304. There they rested together- liefe Oma en Opa. For that moment, all recurring memories of Willy’s turbulent relationship with her father seemed to be erased.

April 11, 2012 © Frank H. Jump

On a recent trip to the Netherlands, Vincenzo and I parked our rental car in the parking lot adjacent to my grandparents’ gravesite. We walked in a circle around where I remembered they rested and accessed the online grave database for the plot number. As anticipated, they were disinterred and their bones were incinerated since I was last there with Willy. We further explored this beautiful cemetery where my grandparents once were layed.

July 26, 2014 © Frank H. Jump

When we returned from our vacation, we continued to empty my mother’s apartment and on August 20, 2014 – 861 days since my mother and I traveled to visit the place of her birth one last time, I handed in her apartment keys to the rental management office at Spring Creek, Brooklyn. Willy is currently residing in a lovely nursing facility in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn – overlooking the mouth of Jamaica Bay, Breezy Point, Sandy Hook and the hustle and bustle of jet-skiers, yachts, sailboats, fishing boats, cruise ships, tankers and other vessels en route to the New York Harbor or the Atlantic Ocean.