Love Is All Around & Mary Tyler Moore

My family and maybe some of my friends know I have a bit of the shine. I don't see dead people exactly but I have premonitions about things, weird hunches, strange dreams, one too many coincidences. 

I hear music a lot -- like in my basement I sometimes hear music. We have a stone foundation. I don't know if music is being carried through the ground and into the rock, but it's older music like Big Band era music so I wonder. Here's another thing, I like cemeteries.

Today I decided to go to Oak Lawn Cemetery in Fairfield.  It's a beautiful old cemetery in what is nearly Southport. I've been there once before to visit the grave of a young man whose family established a music scholarship in his name. I wanted to say thank you to David John Nogan for his help with our music kid's tuition at Loyola NOLA.

This time I was going to see Mary Tyler Moore's grave. I loved Mary Tyler Moore. Her shows yes, but I also loved her great style, the way she tossed her hat, and swished her beautiful 1970's long hair. She was just cool. I remember reading her obituary and feeling so sad for all of us who lost her. And then I read that she too was buried at Oak Lawn Cemetery in Fairfield. I knew someday I'd visit her grave. 

I brought with me the following offerings: one of our son Will's old baseballs, a guitar pick from his new music school in Minneapolis-St. Paul and some Mardi Gras beads with trumpets on them. My feeling was these were symbols of the old Will and the new Will. I wanted to leave the guitar pick and baseball for Mary Tyler Moore, the patron saint of Minneapolis-St. Paul, to watch over our Will as he transitions from young boy to young man in Minnesota. The beads were for David John Nogan, the musician who died far too young with connections to Louisana, where Will went to college last year. 

I need a Venn diagram to explain this clearly.  But in my mind, it mad perfect sense. Say goodbye to Louisiana, say hello to Minnesota and ask two souls to watch over Will.

Our dog Daisy ate the cover off the baseball on the way to the cemetery. She's obviously feeling better. My offerings now shrunk to two.

I drove in slowly, respectfully, minding the narrow paths that wind through Oak Lawn. I saw baby deer and big deer and none of them seemed to mind my passing. They would slowly shuffle out of the way, like here comes another one out to ruin my lunch. 

I found the section where Mary Tyler Moore was buried and circled slowly. I saw two people sitting near the center of section D, but I didn't really make a connection. I finally decided to get out of the car and walk around. I felt self-conscious because I'd just jumped in the car without thinking about what I was wearing. And that would be -- ripped jeans, my painting Birkenstocks with colorful splatter all over them and a kind of macrame detailed Lucky jeans shirt. But I thought, "Hey Mary Tyler Moore was a 1970's kind of gal, she'll get my hippie vibe." 

Here's where the shine part comes into play. 

The two people in the cemetery I would describe as a salt-and-pepper gentleman with glasses and a blond woman of a certain age, also with glasses and a vague European accent possibly of German or Austrian descent. With them, was an older dog who seemed friendly enough. But there are signs everywhere that say No Dogs Allowed. I felt sort of judgmental about them until I remembered my own dog was in the car with the AC blasting. 

I approached, said hello and met the dog. I asked the dog's name of the woman because he seemed to be her dog. 

The man answered, "Spanky." 

"Oh,' I said 'like that kid's show from back in the day?" 

He smiled. "Right," he said.

"Our Gang," I said. 

And I kept walking around in circles trying to find the place where Mary Tyler Moore was buried. The man, the woman and dog started packing up to leave.

There was something kind of strange about them. The woman sat upright, rather austerely, herding the dog as they left with commands of, "Heel!" The man sat on a stone bench in an enclosure surrounded by an orange mesh fence. I think he was reading a newspaper now that I think about it. For whatever reason, it never occurred to me that this area surrounded by fence might be where Mary Tyler Moore was buried. I did see a large white statue but I couldn't read the grave stone and I certainly didn't want to cross the orange fence to get a better look. 

Then I saw the man walking back toward me. Maybe he'd forgotten something I thought. 

He asked, "Can I help you with something?" 

"I"m looking for the grave of Mary Tyler Moore," I said. "Is this it? Do you know?" I asked, pointing to the fenced-in area. 

"Yes," he said. "We haven't finished with it yet. Pouring the cement and," his voice trailed off. 

And then I realized. "Are you her husband?" I asked. He nodded yes. 

I'm not a person who is light on her feet - I don't think quickly in situations like these. In an emergency, I'm a champ. Public speaking, not so much. I started babbling, explaining the story of taking Will to Minnesota, and that even though I know Mary Tyler Moore's not from Minnesota, I just wanted to leave something of Will's for her. 

"That's very sweet," he said. I showed him the guitar pick. 

"He's a musician," I said. 

"Leave it here," he said pointing to a row of stones on her grave. "Weight it down so it won't blow away." 

I thanked him as he watched me place the guitar pick on his wife's grave. Her husband was Jewish I remembered that too. I looked it up, the reason why Jews leaves stones on the graves of their loved ones. Putting stones on a grave keeps the person's soul down in this world. That's what I found out about the stones.

He had kind eyes. I must've sounded crazy with my ripped jeans and guitar pick rant about my kid in Minnesota. He's a cardiologist her husband, Dr. Robert Levine, so my guess is he's seen it all.

"I loved her," I said, starting to tear up. 

"Me too," he said.

NB: I did some more research. Of course, Mary Tyler Moore started a wonderful pet adoption charity called Broadway Barks and Spanky the dog was a rescue pit bull belonging to her housekeeper Anna, likely the woman I saw today. Moore said that Spanky could sense when her blood sugar dropped which helped with managing her diabetes.