Mrs. Ferrante, the cemetery manager, opened the green ledger again, right there on my mothers headstone, and put her finger on the notary stamp under my fathers fake signature. And I knew that name before she read it.
It was Deb. My brother Larrys wife. A notary.
Larry had not just forged our fathers signature to sell the grave beside our mother, he had his own wife stamp it, swearing she watched a man with a dead right hand sign his own name.
The transfer form in the ledger said Joseph Lisowski, owner of interment rights, Lot 14-B, signed and notarized in April. But in April my father was three weeks past a stroke. His right hand did not work. The nursing home charts say he could not hold a fork, let alone a pen. Mrs. Ferrante had asked him, right there in his wheelchair with the blanket on his knees, is this your signature, and Dad squinted and said, thats not how I write my J.
A notary has to watch the person sign. That is the entire job. Deb had stamped a signature her own father-in-law could not physically have made, to help her husband sell a dying mans burial plot for thirty-eight hundred dollars to pay off a fishing boat.
I am Gene. I am sixty-six, and I built locomotives at the GE plant in Erie for thirty-six years. I lost my wife Carol three years ago, so I know what a grave means to the man left standing. My mother Helen died five years ago, and every year on the anniversary we bring Dad to see her. He is ninety-one. He forgets my name sometimes. He has never once forgotten hers, and every visit he pats the grass beside her headstone and says, thats mine, Gene, right there, next to my girl.
In July I went up alone to plant mums and found an orange flag in Plot 14-B, marking a future burial. The office said it had been transferred in April to a family from Millcreek. Larry did not even pretend when I called. Yeah, I sold it, thirty-eight hundred, paid off the boat. Dads ninety-one and doesnt remember what day it is, hell never know. His wife Deb got on the line and said, Larry needed it more than a dead man does.
I did not argue. I went to my mothers cedar chest and found the yellow envelope from 1974, Erie Cemetery, Lots 14-A and 14-B, and on the back in my fathers hand, paid in full, nobody signs for me. He bought both plots the year I was ten, so he could lie next to his girl someday. Then I called the office and asked one question, and I waited for September.
A plot owner has to sign his own transfer. If the signature is not his, the transfer is void, and the Millcreek family gets their money back from whoever took it. My fathers signature could not have been his, because his hand did not work, and the medical record proved it, and the mans own eyes told him, thats not how I write my J.
And a notary who stamps a signature she did not witness, a signature the signer could not have made, has committed a crime, not done a favor. Debs stamp was right there in the ledger. Mrs. Ferrante said the police would want to talk to the notary, and then she read the name, and it was family, which did not make it smaller, it made it worse.
The transfer was voided. The Millcreek family, who had already set a bench on the plot, were refunded and were gracious about it once they understood. The bench came off. Lot 14-B is my fathers again, waiting beside my mother the way he paid for it to, in 1974, in his own hand.
Larry and Deb faced the law, not my anger. Forging a stroke patients signature and notarizing it to sell his grave is elder exploitation and notary fraud, and a boat payment is a poor reason to answer for both.
Nobody signs for me, my dad wrote in 1974, and he meant it as a point of pride about a thing he paid for honestly. Fifty-two years later those four words undid the whole scheme. I wheeled him up the hill this September and he patted the grass beside his girl and said, thats mine, right there. It is, Dad. It always was. Nobody signs for you.