Her Parents' Graves

I traveled to Boston to view Plath-related sites and saw Otto's grave in Winthrop Cemetery and Aurelia Plath's in Wellesley's Woodlawn Cemetery. Both cemeteries are well-kept, tree-shaded, quiet and bewildering. Winthrop Cemetery has three terrace-like sections separated by streets and Otto is buried in the bottom-most terrace, the one not yet filled, which abuts a golf course. At Otto's grave I was alone. What came to mind was "He died like any man." There's no mythic aura unless you bring your own.

It's right off the path as Sylvia said. See it for yourself (video, 21 seconds).

At Aurelia Plath's grave in Wellesley I left a thank-you note near Aurelia's "flush marker," that is, a stone flush with the ground, not even a 3-D brick like Otto's. I used Findagrave.com's coordinates and map to find the Schober plot where Aurelia is buried at her parents' feet. Crabgrass partly obscures Aurelia's marker. Only garden tools could clean it up. I brought the thank-you note thinking gratitude is all any mother really wants. (I don't know what fathers want.) I weighted the note with a stray chunk of marble, and had my picture taken there for social media.

Woodlawn Cemetery, Wellesley, 2024

I had prepared to travel on to Linden, New Jersey and photograph the grave of Aurelia's African-American uncle Christopher Nicholson, buried in Rosedale-Rosehill Cemetery there. Burials in Manhattan are unlawful, so its dead end up in the boroughs or New Jersey. Phoned the cemetery, learned Nicholson has no marker and the only info is the date he was buried: October 31, 1956. The Manhattan death record says Nicholson was 70. In fact he was 73, but apparently he had no one close enough to know that, least of all his niece and great-niece Aurelia and Sylvia.

I didn't go to New Jersey.

Neither parent's gravestone has a quotation or says "beloved" or anything, and neither had any tributes such as plastic flowers, coins, or little flags. I should have brought and planted American flags on all three graves.

Because how these three people became family, Sylvia Plath's family, is a very American story.