“We just need to find the cow monument,” I said as we drove through the centre of the small New Hampshire town for the third time. “I’ll know where we are from there—although it’s been over 20 years since the last time I was here.”

“If here is in fact where we are and not somewhere else,” grumbled my sister, who was driving. “Are you sure this is the right town?”

“Are we lost?” my niece asked from the back seat.

Her brother echoed, “L-o-o-ost,” in his best Karlovian accent.

“My father says you can’t get lost if you don’t know where you’re going,” my daughter Bethany said, with all the confidence of someone recently finished with formal education.. Her cousins mulled that over for a moment.

“I don’t think that makes any sense, “ said Nicole.

The driver slid us neatly past a huge eight-axle juggernaut loaded with holiday cheer and I glimpsed an exit sign. “That’s it! We’re in the wrong town. Follow that truck!”

We left the largest traffic circle in New Hampshire and within moments were back on a barely two lane road which went up a hill. “This is the hill Barbi and her sisters used to sled down, I’m sure of it!” I said. “Take a left at the top, then the next right. “

More by luck than by my skills as a navigator we found the cow monument, and beyond it the church, and behind that the large old cemetery which was our destination. Intermittent wind gusts shook the car. The sentinel maple trees raked the lowering sky with their naked branches. Ice crusted the grey stone walls that held the rusting gates. This wasn’t the best weather for a trip to New Hampshire, but we were on a mission and could not go home leaving it undone.

“Why is that a cow monument?” Bethany asked. “It looks like a war memorial of some sort.”

“Your great-great Aunt Nina— my grandmother’s sister—once enraged the parson ‘s free-ranging cow, which wandered around the church yard. We don’t know exactly what she did, but it stirred up the cow’s ancient aurochs genes and the beast charged Nina. They ran around the monument several times before Nina was able to scramble up the steps—which as you can see, aren’t really steps, just a sort of platform of three ledges. Nina clung to the pillar of the monument while balancing precariously on the top ledge. The other three sisters felt it was only justice, and left their sister to her fate.” I smiled at the memory. Our grandmother, always called ‘Barbi’ had told me this story every time we passed through this little town. The triumph of the cow over the bossy sister was still savoured even after the passage of 70 years, “Eventually the cow got bored and went back to her barn to be milked. From what Barbi said, Nina got walloped by their mother for her sins.”

“Which way is the family plot from here?” Chris asked, teeth gritted with the effort of keeping the car on the icy, rutted dirt road through the cemetery.

“Somewhere in the older section. It looks different under snow. Nicole, you and Kai look out the right side and Beth, you look out the left. Sing out if you see a big grey stone tree-trunk lying on its side, with the name ‘Sanders’ on it”. I rubbed the condensation off my window and peered into the darkening sky.

Forty years slipped off my shoulders and I was suddenly a child again, living one of those endless golden summers that never come again once you leave grammar school. My grandmother and I went ‘antiquing’ upcountry several times each summer. She was never called ‘grandma’—at age two I had dubbed her ‘Barbi’ and so she remained for the rest of her life. All her children and grandchildren adopted the nick-name. We returned from these expeditions with the equivalent of the “Treasures of the Indies”—maple dough boxes, colonial pine trugs, brass candlesticks and pewter bowls that could have been made by old Paul himself—all to be cleaned and priced and displayed in Barbi’s antique shop. The high point of the day would be to eat out, perhaps at the Tuscarora Bakery, or Joe’s, or—most prized of all—Fiddler’s Green, where the chicken a la king reached unsurpassable heights of toothsomeness. How grand one felt, eating from a pewter porringer, and watching the condensation bead on the ruby glass tumbler of cold water, without which no meal with my grandmother was ever complete. An enormous linen napkin covered a pair of often grubby knees. These trips were valued by both of us—Barbi escaped the cautious vigilance of her children who had begun to question her driving ability and I escaped the role of big sister for a while. (“Take Chrissy for a walk.” “You must set a good example for your sister.” “Share your toys, she’s only little, don’t hurt her feelings.”)

How strange now to be in the familiar hunting grounds with the same sister, now in the commanding role of driver, mother of two, and 39 years old. The time warp snapped shut, leaving me shivering in the December gloom and beginning to regret the trip. Fifteen years in Australia had rather blunted my fondness for a New England winter.

We circuited the graveyard again, negotiating the hairpin turns to the accompaniment of indrawn breaths from the back seat every time the tires failed to find traction.

“Why don’t I get out and cut across this central lawn area? The Sanders plot might be where we can’t see it from the road,” Bethany suggested.

“It’s bitter out there--this isn’t Australia. You could frost your lung tops,” her aunt replied, stopping the car to get her bearings.

Beth snorted defiance of the weather in her recently rediscovered homeland. “Weather doesn’t faze me—Aussies are tough.”She opened the door and plunged off into the gloom.

“She really is Australian, isn’t she?” Chris commented, grabbing at her offspring as they attempted to follow their cousin.

“A hybrid, I guess—that’s part of the reason for this visit, to reacquaint her with her roots, let her find out what being American is all about.”.

“Well, she couldn’t get a more basic start than in a New England graveyard. I just hope this is the right one.”

“It is—look over there; there’s the stone!” I yelled. The name ‘Sanders’ was half visible on the granite headstone under its coat of lichen schmaltz . The stone had been carved in the likeness of a tree trunk lying on its side. Individual stones marked particular individuals’ final resting places. The whole plot was the size of a 9 x 12 carpet.

“Thank goodness—I didn’t fancy taking the box back with us,” Chris said. She loosed her young from the back seat and they galloped over the unbroken snow towards their cousin, who by now had also spotted the headstone.

“I take it this is the place,” she said, rubbing at the encrusted lichen to expose the full inscription.

“It is indeed. Here lie buried your great-great grand parents on my father’s mother’s side of the family, and assorted other relatives, “ I explained. “This is the place my mother promised Nana—our great-grandmother-- would be her final home. It’s not Mom’s fault that the ashes lay forgotten at the mortuary for 30 years.”

Beth counted on her fingers. “I make that four years Nana must have been somewhere in limbo.”

“Not limbo—in Mom’s Dutch oven. When the mortuary closed, the owners wrote to the last known address, which is how their letter came to our mother. The undertaker’s widow said she’d discovered Nana’s ashes in the back of a cupboard. Mom picked up the box and for want of a better place, stashed it in the Dutch oven, the one built into the fireplace wall in the TV room. All attempts to get Nana’s three surviving daughters to take ownership over the years came to naught. That’s why we’re here now, at the old family burying plot, to find a place for Nana to rest from now on.”

“My father is right—your family does have a rather slapdash and untidy way with the remains of their loved ones,” Bethany said.

“Your father exaggerates.” I said. “ True, Uncle Harry’s ashes rode out the war in the rumble seat of a ’39 Ford coupe, and then spent a decade n the barn loft, but we eventually got around to settling him into permanent quarters.”

“Yes, but under a spider lily beside the front steps? ? Why not in a cemetery?”

A good question. “Mother was fond of Uncle Harry, so she put him where she could keep an eye on him.”

Beth snorted and thumped the heel of her ugg boot on the family plot. “It’s frozen solid. No way will you be able to bury anything here.” I swept the snow from in front of one of the smaller headstones , labelled “Mother”. Dessicated witch grass sprouted from what seemed to be permafrost.

“Not to worry—the Waters girls come prepared,” said my sister, slamming down a horse feed bucket full of sand and a shovel. “Get those greens out of the back seat and start decorating!” she ordered her children, who had busied themselves stamping out a fox and geese pattern of impressive proportions on an adjoining plot.

Chris took a brown paper package from the trunk. Peeling back the paper, she revealed a tarnished gilt paper box about the size of a small shoe box. A faded label said “M A Sanders”. Loosening the top, she handed the box to me. “You’re the senior great-grandchild, you take it. And remember: if you are caught, the secretary will disavow all knowledge of your activities.” She looked about the cemetery in the gathering gloom, and added, “You do realise this is illegal?”

“Nonsense!” I snorted with all the confidence of one who would be leaving the country in three days. “How could it be illegal to fulfil our great-grandmother’s dying wish?” I poured the pinkish-grey dust on the frozen ground in front of the stone that said “Mother”. Chris tipped the bucket of sand over it. Bethany smoothed the pile and tamped it down. The little kids stuck the branches of hemlock and pinecones into the pile. Chris twined the strand of prince’s pine around the arrangement and placed a red all-weather fake velvet bow atop it.

I called everyone to order and recited as much of the Anglican committal service as I could remember. As I intoned, “…in sure and certain hope of the resurrection.” the gloom broke and a patch of brilliant azure opened above us.

“That’s good enough for me; let’s get out of here,” said Chris, grabbing her spade and bucket and chivvying her offspring towards the car. “Let’s not push our luck; mince pies and eggnog await at home.” Barely waiting for seatbelts to be fastened, she whipped us away down the hill and back to the main road.

“Is that all there is to a funeral?” Nicole asked from the back seat, unimpressed.

“It’s all there is in weather like this, “ her mother replied, braking for an ancient Labrador at the cemetery gates. “And more that the old lady would have had if your aunt hadn’t taken on this job. Can you imagine, 34 years Nana’s been hanging around –why didn’t anyone do something before this?”

“I don’t know. I still think my first idea was the best one—gift wrap the box and send it anonymously to her only surviving daughter.” I said.

“I think I’ll be lost at sea,” said Chris. “Given this family’s track record it’s probably the closest thing to a proper funeral I can hope for.”

“You could do what the fellow in Perth did with his garbage—box it and put some Christmas stickers on it and leave it in his unlocked car,” suggested Bethany.

As we turned south on Route 127, the blue sky closed in again, and the promised White Christmas began to fall.

That’s not quite the end of the story. When we got home, our mother was getting nervous. “Your note just said “Gone to New Hampshire”. It’s almost dark, I was worried. What did you do there?”

“We dealt with the albatross that’s been around your neck for 34 years,“ I said. “We took Nana to her ancestral burying ground, as she wanted. She’s home in time for Christmas.”

“The ground was frozen, but we spread her ashes in front of a small stone and covered them decently and put some greenery and a bow –she looked quite nice,” Chris added. “Karen said a fair bit of the prayers for funerals. It was all very dignified.”

“Which small stone?”

“The one that said ‘Mother’. It seemed the logical choice,” I explained.

Mother gasped. Then she laughed. “Oh, lord love a duck! Do you know what you’ve done? That stone—that’s where Nana’s mother-in-law is buried!”

“And…?” Bethany asked.

“And they hated each other all their lives—so now they can continue to do so for all eternity.”