I have been putting this trip to Inglewood off for five years. Sunday, it was finally time to go, to get it done.
We drove up the world’s busiest-seeming freeway to Inglewood, a city across the I-405 from the infamous Los Angeles International Airport. I vaguely remembered the wide city streets, the jumble of 50-something apartment buildings, the “You Buy, We Fry” joints. I’d been there 26 years ago, on a bittersweet, horribly hot summer day. On this return trip, Sunday, Nov. 20th, it was raining.
When I do massages for people going through life changes, I can feel the tension, the anticipation, the dread, the excitement. The life change might be a wedding day, a retirement, the death of a spouse, death of a parent or child.
When the client is in mourning, I have felt the grief inside the thoracic area, the held shallow breaths, the emotional disconnection from daily life. I’ve always found it special to be able to do massages to relax someone in mourning and help them reconnect with the fact that life goes on.
Life does go on, and it seems to help to share those feelings and be nurtured with a massage. I felt that empathy again on the way to Inglewood, wondering why this neighborhood seemed so different yet unchanged at the same time.
Inglewood Cemetery is incredibly large, set on rolling hills once used for farms. It dates from 1905. The massive entrance opens to huge statues of winged angels, mature trees, ringed by high-rise mausoleums with incredible stained glass windows. I watched ducks and geese peck at the lawn by a man-made lake. It is so large, you need to get a map and drive in.
My first trip here, I had brought my mother, who had never healed from the fact that her Dad went to work one day and never came home. He was killed in an industrial accident when she was 3 years old. She didn’t quite remember everything that had gone on, and shortly after his death, her mother moved the family away from Los Angeles.
I did the research at the public library, sent away for the death certificate and found a copy of the news story that appeared in the paper when he died. He had been trying to save two other construction workers from a live wire when he died of electrocution. The death certificate listed Inglewood Cemetery.
We drove up the same freeway to this now-inner-city neighborhood, got lost and asked directions, trying not to look like rubes. What had been farmland and orchards in my grandfather’s time was now a bedroom community, largely African-American, dense with people, soul-food restaurants and cars.
My mom and I found the grave with the help of the cemetery caretaker. A flat marble headstone, dated 1929, in the center of a massive pot of single graves. She sat by the grave and talked to her Dad for a long time while we fried in the sun. We made the drive home in near-silence. When she was able to speak, she said: “Thanks for taking me.”
Mom died five years ago, and I have had her ashes sitting in the entertainment center at my home. At first, I couldn’t even look at the box, let alone think of making the trip to Inglewood again. Finally on Sunday, her birthday, I was able to make the drive.
We found my grandfather’s grave and placed her ashes there. My spouse held the umbrella while I said a few prayers and thanked Mom for taking care of me. I thanked her Dad for taking care of her. My mother was my first experience with nurturing touch. It is because of her that I have the empathy and nurturing touch to be a massage therapist.
Lots of massage therapists enjoy working with athletes so much they make a specialty of it, which is to say they look for people whose routine is extreme. I’m not one of those people, though I have to admit when I get one pro hockey player on my schedule, it naturally tends to fill up with a few more players referred by their friends.
