My Day as a Graveyard Gardener

It sounds absurd, I know.

I also knew going into this that it was hard, honest labor. But something about that philosophy attracted me to it even – either from hearing my father drone on about character built from a good day’s work or more likely from being exceedingly fed up with desk jobs where bosses would assign newsletter deadlines with energy equivalent to working in a hospital.

As the years have gone on, I’ve realized that I want some more peace in the workspace. I no longer wished to hear the clanking and clambering of keyboards or to rush from customer to customer in nonslip shoes or sit through the purgatory-esque video calls that begin with, “Happy Monday!” No, now I longed for birds chirping and the sounds of leaves blowing in the wind. I wanted the camaraderie of tipping my hat to fellow gardeners. I wanted to plant peonies and tune out.

Early morning shifts were of little concern to me since I had long considered myself resilient since my bakery days: My near three year stint at a beloved New Jersey bakery still hangs with great pride as proof that I had once lived a life where I got up at 4:30 am regularly. Moreover, I was that oddly jovial person who was humming while placing the croissants on display. It gave me full confidence that almost a decade later, I could manage the 7:30 am start at the graveyard.

The whole death topic was not something that shocked me either. Death was already present in my life after losing my mom. As a way of dealing, I dove in intellectually: university courses, memoirs from funeral directors, training in hospice. Wouldn’t working full-time in a paid position of a graveyard gardener be the bow that tied the macabre package together?

After perusing around the web for some opportunities, I came across an eerily ideal situation: an internship for a graveyard located only 12 minutes away. I emailed right away and before the end of the week, I was penciled in. The man in charge seemed happy to meet new people who wanted to take on this peculiar profession. I was ready for a new leaf.

The Morning

When the row of X’s on the calendar finally signaled Monday, I find myself struggling to pry myself from bed after the 5:30 alarm. This is somehow more cumbersome than I remember. After getting ready and stepping out the door, I am hit with an unfamiliar chill in the air. Most likely it’s the fact that I am simply not used to being outside so early and that there’s rain in the forecast. Or maybe it’s some whisper of forewarning.

I shake my head from such thoughts and make my way over. Soon enough, I am locking up my bike out front just as a woman pushes a cart of flowers out from the floral shop. I smile and wave, wondering if she’s going to be some permanent side character in my new everyday life. Would she deliver gossip or give me motherly advice or simply wish me a nice morning? Today, she just returns my wave – but tomorrow, who knows.

Stepping into the building marked Grabpflege (Grave Maintenance) surprisingly feels like entering the dentist’s office with its sterilized atmosphere. A woman behind the desk with thick rimmed glasses perched precariously upon her nose looks up at me. I greet her with an overeager smile, each moment teetering with excitement about the potential of my new career.

“What can I do for you?” she says with a tone that could be considered polite questioning in Germany but to my foreign ears comes across like suspicion that one places upon a child with cookie crumbs on their face.

I offer my name timidly. Her suspicion turns to confusion. I try again, “I’m here for the internship?”

“What internship?” she asks. Her fingers hover slightly above the keyboard, ready for me to say a magic passcode. I look instinctively to my phone to search for some solution; I am suddenly doubting if I am in the right place or time. But then I remember that my anxious self had already triple checked everything.

With words coated in uncertainty, I tell her that I am here for the graveyard gardener internship which thankfully generates a nod of recognition as her fingers begin to melt from their frozen state.

“Did you bring gloves?” she asks.

“Gloves?”

“Gloves.”

“No...”

“What size are you?”

“Um, I’m not sure.”

The woman sighs and pushes herself from her chair to retreat to a closet.

“You’re probably a Small. Try these on,” she says as she throws over a pair of neon green gloves. I do as ordered. I give her a thumbs up to confirm her assessment of my handsize.

“You’re wearing them inside out,” she says. I think briefly that if it fits inside out, then logically it would also fit right side out. Yet she continues to wait there with an arched eyebrow. I adjust the gloves before presenting my hand once again, wondering briefly if this is what it feels like to be a hand model. Apparently satisfied, she tells me to follow her.

On the way there, she livens up as if my hands now clad in gardening gloves have transformed me into a trustworthy person. Or at least someone she can make small talk with. She goes off on a flux of information about breaks, the site, people, only briefly stopping to ask if I am over the age of 18. I am dumbstruck at the moment – not sure if she is attempting to pay me a compliment after the bumpy start or if she literally has failed to notice the creases that run like canyon rivers across my forehead. I tell her I am nearly double that. She laughs heartedly. I smile. I try, as I’ve been raised to do, to just take the compliment.

I am brought into the break room, where my senses are immediately overwhelmed: musty air reeking of cut grass and burned coffee, the low static hum of Schlager (German bar music) emanating from the 20th century radio, the lone bright and flickering overhead bulb. A couple people stand by the pine green lockers putting on their pine green uniforms. Green everywhere. On the door before leaving the room, there is a laminated list that states at the top that one could enjoy Feierabend (the end of the shift) only after completing the checklist.

The woman who analyzed my hands assumes that two colleagues would adopt me, like some baby bird found on the street. However, these colleagues who have now finished dressing only manage to give me a look of pity. They can’t possibly take on more responsibility at this time. I plop down on a rusted chair and try to focus my gaze on the looming clouds outside. A leaky faucet in another room drips like a sort of metronome for the next 30 minutes that I sit here alone.

Eventually, a young woman, someone you should ask if they are above 18 or not, motions me to follow her.

“You will most likely do the watering today,” she tells me while leading me to the shed.

“Oh, okay! What’s your name?”

“Anna.”

“Nice to meet you, Anna.”

I think Anna nods, but I am not sure. She doesn’t ask for my name or respond until we arrive at the shed. Once we find two large watering cans, we head over to the group. I look around this small team huddle and count with my gloved fingertips that there are five of us all together. The one giving instructions does not make eye contact with me until the group is dismissed.

“And who are you?” he asks.

Not skipping a beat this time around, I answer, “I’m here for an internship.”

“Ah. Okay. Well, then Pierre will lead you today.”

As I turn to follow the person who must be Pierre, the leader reaches with his pointer finger upwards.

“One quick thing. Make sure you only take care of the graves with our markers on them. You’ll see. If you have questions, just let me know.”

I give the perfunctory head nod response and then notice that Pierre is already walking away. I try to pick up my pace to catch up with him as plastic watering canisters bang alongside each other.

We’re back at the shed. Pierre offers me two smaller watering canisters. Pierre is a man of few words, but as the day wears on, I realize he is specifically a man of few German words. A foreigner like me, a fact that I thought could unite us, but proves not as helpful as I thought since he speaks no English. In this case, he looks over to me to tell me that my watering canisters were zu groß. Too big. I immediately feel that old heated sensation come up of needing to prove myself, but then I quickly remind myself that I am an adult here to learn and maybe this is not the place I need to prove myself. Or at least not by the size of my watering canister.

We are on our way to the first plots of land. Pierre turns on a faucet to a shallow well full of murky greenish water and then submerges his canister. I follow his example and surprise, my precious new gloves are now completely soaked. Okay, so these are not water-proof. He takes two full watering cans and floods the first grave plot.

I try to mimic him with another grave plot and find myself struggling with the two full canisters. Pierre only comments, mehr Wasser, more water. The ground looks thoroughly soaked but I do as I am told. I calculate that one canister waters only one to two graves. As I look around the acres of land ahead of us, I instantly feel in my bones that today is going to be a long day.

Pierre mostly leaves me to my own devices. The rest of the morning then becomes a routine of filling, carrying, pouring. My pants are soaked from the knees downward and my jacket covered with large wet splotches. The clouds continue to look more ominous and I begin to pray for rain in hopes that it will save me.

Call me a milksop, I don’t care. This continual labor succeeds in being both mentally numbing and physically strenuous. It’s difficult to hear the birds chirping with the constant sloshing of my watering can. The wind becomes a nemesis as the breeze makes the wet splotches sting an icy coldness. Two long hours pass before Pierre finds me and tells me Pause, break. A lit cigarette hangs from his lips as he goes to sit on a bench. The smoke creates a sort of forcefield around him which is good enough of a reason to venture elsewhere.

I check behind my shoulder before opening the gate to the adjacent park as if I am a prisoner making a run for it. No, no. I am just taking a break and I want to be here, right? I find a smoke free bench and try not to be swallowed by the swirling doubts in my mind. Yet I am unable to stop the wash cycle in my mind: could I really do this job for another six hours? Two weeks? 40 years? Runners and parents with strollers stride by. One small creature, somewhere between a baby and toddler, gestures with a grasping hand out like she’s beckoning me to come closer. I wave back and smile.

Ignoring the oracle toddler-baby’s command, I get up to go to the bathroom before I start receiving messages from the trees. The walk alone with my bewildered zig-zagging eats up a good chunk of time and when I finally do arrive back at the Grabpflege storefront, there is a small ring of sweat on my forehead. To my dismay, the breakroom is locked. I go to the glove woman and ask what to do and she tells me that there’s a bathroom in the florist shop next door. Ah, my soon-to-be gossiping auntie.

I walk into the pristine white tiled space filled with ceramic vases of fresh cut bouquets. No cut grass or coffee smell lingering in the air. I try to stamp the soil off my shoes as my eyes meet with the woman who surprisingly looks like Martha Stewart with her sheers and apron. I meekly ask if I can use the bathroom and she leads me to a private bathroom sans motherly advice or neighborhood news. Not surprisingly, the bathroom is a blinding white cube of a toilet and sink. I try my best to not stain any of it.

As I’m washing my hands, my thoughts turn to panic. Since I am locked away from my water bottle in the breakroom, what do I drink until lunch? The pond-like well water? The idea alone is enough motivation for me to duck my head under the faucet and lap up as much water in the sink. Had Pierre or any of the others brought a water bottle with them? As water streams down my chin, I am one step closer to the hardened worker that I dreamed I would be. I will probably open a beer bottle with just my teeth by the end of the week.

Avoiding eye contact with Martha Stewart, I lightly jog back to the graveyard to search for Pierre. I try to hide my exacerbated breathing as he continues to smoke peacefully on the bench. I shift nervously in his proximity, again feeling his smoke barrier repelling me like some pesky mosquito. Eventually the cigarette is snuffed out and without so much as a glance to me, Pierre picks up his XL watering cans and heads back to where he was.

The next two hours pass by in a meditative-like discomfort – something between raking a zen garden and pushing a boulder up a hill. Each dip of my watering can into the murky water resoaks my gloves. I try to take a moment in-between to admire the setting: the snails attached to the well walls, the crawling English Ivy, the lilac bushes that infuse the air with a sweet, honey scent. Then I feel the droplets turn to a stream of rain.

It had sprinkled on and off throughout the morning, but I had the German saying, wir sind nicht aus Zucker (we’re not made out of sugar) to remind me to ignore my displeasure. But now my jacket is fully turning another shade darker. Where is Pierre? I feel like a kid lost in a grocery store, yet also aware that this situation is what mere hours ago I was wishing for. As if by magic, Pierre finds me again and motions me to go to a bench under a large tree.

I ask if it’s okay to sit next to him on the bench – our little island in the ocean of rain around us – and he nods. Hesitantly, I fall back on my roots and try to make small talk. We don’t make direct eye contact; there always seems to be something else ahead of us that feels easier to focus on. Here I learn that he lives in another city and has a one and half hour commute each way everyday. I don’t mention to him that I biked 12 minutes to get here today.

Soon enough, a cigarette makes another appearance as does the flicking of Pierre’s lighter. I am once again dispelled and leave to lean directly on the tree that keeps us mostly dry. The stranded on an island metaphor is feeling more accurate.

Mittagspause

Lunch is in 20 minutes when the rain becomes more bearable to work in, but Pierre remains seated, staring out into the abyss of tombstones. I’m afraid that this momentary downtown is being counted as our 30 minutes, and perhaps Pierre notices my unease as he tells me to warte, wait, lunch is at 12. I guess now’s as good as ever to pull up an audiobook and tune out.

The narrator’s dialogue centers on living honestly and wildly, even though she's at the beginning of a divorce. Juxtoposed with the many graves of married couples bound not just until death, but beyond, I can’t help but chuckle. Here in Germany, a grave is rented for 20-30 years and then a family member decides to extend or let the space be reused. The red menacing stickers placed on a few graves here warn of Nutzungsrecht abgelaufen (usage rights have expired). Pay up or prepare for another party to join. Who knows who’s decomposed under Gertrude and Heinrich here? Heike and Friedrich? Frieda and Otto? Was it really so ludicrous to let our remains intermesh with others? As if we weren’t already stardust?

Pierre wakes me out of my internal morbid pondering with the sweet words of relief: lunchtime. I start walking over and feel my arms heavy as lead. I know tomorrow will feel much worse. We arrive at the breakroom which is now open to find our two other colleagues unwrapping their cold cut sandwiches and couscous salads. There is thankfully no microwaved fish smell, but with the flipside being that there is no way to heat up food in our little breakroom. We merely have a fridge and two faucets. I take out my own salad from my rucksack and join the tupperware crew. The radio still coughs out a static filled soundtrack of bar music. Even as the lyrics sing of living life to the fullest with a beer in hand, I imagine the miserable bunch of us nibbling away look like the opposite vision.

No one makes conversation, let alone eye contact. One hand spoons in food, another hand cradles a glowing phone. Eventually I decide to break the silence and ask the group, “So I have a dumb question, but if it’s raining, why do we still water the graves?” The older man sits up straighter and smiles, apparently basking in this moment to say that the plants need lots of water. “Even if it’s storming?” which he counters by saying only if it’s truly a proper storm, then we will do another task, but normally we are outside – rain or shine. My face scrunches up a bit and he tries to cheer me up by saying that winter is much worse, “You know with covering up the graves and clearing the paths and all that.”

I don’t answer which gives space for him to now ask about my name, a first for the day. Then the classic question of where I’m from since my accent and jumbled up words are the obvious clues that I’m not from here. I try to include the others by asking what everyone’s favorite task is or what everyone’s first day was like. To my dismay, one colleague tells me that her favorite task is watering and the other man simply describes his first day as Chaos.

Finally it is time to go back into the trenches again. Pierre and I carry our water canisters with as much enthusiasm as one carries groceries up six flights of stairs in summer. I’ve gained enough confidence to try to walk beside Pierre instead of trailing behind him. However, whenever we approach a turn, he instinctively seems to speed up, veer diagonally, and cut me off – something that I’ve had occurred in car traffic, but never walking next to someone. It feels at first like a power move. Or that he really wants to get there faster?

Each time, I am running up to come back to his side like some cartoon assistant. He doesn’t seem to care either way. Finally he comes to a halt and looks around. I’m massaging my wrists and forearms in preparation for the next round of watering when it becomes clear to me what’s wrong: we can’t figure out where we stopped watering because it’s been raining. He tells me to wait and like an obedient dog, I stay.

When Pierre returns, he has two buckets and says, Pflege (maintenance). I remember during the interview that Pflege was something that would be meticulously studied in the three year training – what is a weed, what is decoration, how to properly cut and prune, etc. I knit my eyebrows as I accept the bucket, wondering if I was about to receive a crash course.

Seemingly random, but probably calculated, Pierre plops down a knee pad and gets to work pulling out weeds around a grave. After some observation, I realize there won’t be any instruction so I plop down across and work on pulling the tiny dandelions. He looks up to me, picks up his knee pad, and moves to another grave.

It begins to drizzle rain again and by now, I accept this. Another colleague (or boss?) comes by in a golf cart and asks if my shoes are waterproof. They are not, I tell him. To which he takes his thumb and forefinger to cup his chin and quizzically stare at the rest of my outfit, noticeably drenched from the rain. Something like the look of disapproval crosses his face before he speaks again.

“Well, if you have any questions, just let me know,” he says before heading off.

I return to the kneed position, unsure of what questions I should be asking him. Why do we have to water in the rain? Why does Pierre cut me off when walking? Why don’t you give out waterproof gloves?

In my jumble of internal questions, I realize that in front of me is the grave of a mere teenager, 2006-2019. A reminder of how cruelly short life can be as her grave mirrors that of how I decorated my high school locker with smiling photos, colorful sashes, wrist bands. Forever paused as a teenager, never to experience that life often gets exponentially better.

I get up, brush off my pants, and realize that Pierre is gone. I start to walk down the rows, passing a funeral underway. These people could quite possibly be having one of the worst days of their lives while I’m lost in this maze of graves worrying if I’m plucking the correct weeds. After what feels like walking across three football fields, I give up and go back to my original spot, but I also can’t find it. The wind blows dramatically through the trees and I wonder if this is all some fever dream. A pinch of my soaked hand confirms reality.

I have been weeding away silently for so long that I begin to worry if I still have a voice. I try to say something out loud and startle myself with how raspy my voice is. I should go get some water but don’t feel like repeating my attempt from earlier.

Gratitude, where are you? The only thing I seem to be grateful for now is the graves with the simple garnish of vines, not needing much weeding or trimming. Their Pflege is easy, consistent and something that I can manage. Then I notice that these graves have been here longer than I’ve been alive and the gratitude is replaced with a sense of annoyance. There’s a very slim chance that anyone is coming to visit Herr Schuler who died in 1986. Herr Schuler’s family has apparently extended the rental contract so now generations of strangers will water this plot of land, even when it rains.

The sun comes out, like some brief strokes of hope and I take this as a sign to look for Pierre again. I pick up my bucket of tools and go on my pilgrimage. Pierre has a spooky way of appearing so immediately I find him in an adjacent lot. He sees me, I wave, and he gives a slight nod of acknowledgement. Pflege continues.

In what feels like ages but must only be an hour, Pierre returns to motion to sit on a bench. Am I getting an end of day review? I peel off the gloves, my hands wrinkled and raw like I’ve just shed some skin. The familiar click of the lighter confirms that a cigarette is underway. No feedback comes and I guess this is just a break. I’m not getting paid and Pierre’s paid just barely above minimum wage plus commutes three hours. These are the small ways we fight the system.

Feierabend

Finally the bell tolls and we stand up. We head over to the breakroom where someone has decided to turn the radio off finally. Everyone changes out of their work clothes. One young colleague’s uniform is so soaked, I can’t help but ask what happened, to which she replies that there were problems with the hose. Undisturbed, she goes outside to take a call.

Then as I’m waving goodbye to Pierre, he tells me to wait. I ask why, is it not Feierabend (end of shift)? He tells me, Pause. Thankfully there’s someone else I can bring my pleading eyes to and ask what’s going on.

“Oh, you know we have to get an hour break, right? 15 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes for lunch, and now 15 minutes before we leave. It’s actually quite nice of them to give us that time to change and wash up.”

“But if it’s our break, then we can just leave now, right?” I counter. I feel my grip tightening around my rucksack.

“No, then you wouldn’t have the full hour break legally. Just make yourself comfortable,” he smiles. I am fuming.

I pull out my phone and start typing up an angry message to those close to me that ends with “can you believe this?” The young woman with the soaked uniform is still on the phone. I think I can hear someone playing Candy Crush. I rest my head down on my arms in front of me and try for the very last time to practice gratitude. I’m not very successful.

Then we are released, not by some boss coming to sing our praises or ring of a bell, but simply because someone has looked up at the clock and seen that now we can finally go. I am still in a state of shock for all the strange rules and simultaneous lack thereof when it came to my supervision. We all walk out, I wave goodbye to the woman on the phone, the man who explained the breaks system, the woman who gave me gloves, and the Martha Stewart look-alike. I unlock my bike and head off. I am beyond relieved to leaf this all behind.