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He died when I was 22; I realize I have absolutely no memory of his funeral. I wish I had been a more dutiful daughter. It occurs to me that I have never seen my mother's grave either. Somehow I know she is buried in Harrietfield, the tiny village across the river.

Harrietfield consists of a few dozen cottages. Even so it takes me a while to locate the church, tucked away behind the single large house. The door is locked. Through the dusty window I see rows of dusty pews. No graveyard.

Back in the car, I study the map and discover the graveyard, a mile away near Chapel Hill. It is already late afternoon, but I cannot leave without paying my final respects. A Hungarian friend taught me the Russian custom of sitting down for one minute before leaving a place; in a life full of departures, I have come to find this ritual useful.

Close to Chapel Hill, a rough track leads off to the right. I glimpse a cross. This must be it, I think, and swerve onto the track. Almost immediately, I realize my mistake. What am I doing? I think, and, even as the thought bubbles up, the car sticks fast. I turn off the engine. Once again I am alone with the intricate silence.

I walk to the graveyard -- after all, that is why I am here -- and push open the black iron gate. Several of the stones have fallen and many are blurred with moss and lichen. Soon it becomes apparent that this graveyard has not been in use for many years; none of the graves is later than 1920. Feeling doubly foolish, I jog to the nearest steading. A man emerges, holding a hammer. "I'm stuck in a ditch," I blurt out. "Do you have a phone or a tractor?"

"There's a phone upstairs," he says calmly. "And a couple of chaps came by with a tractor a minute ago. Let's see if they're still here."

In the barn two unlikely angels are seated on a bale of hay, smoking cigarettes: a weatherbeaten man with no teeth, and a fat man, shirtless, his fly undone. "Och, you'll be stuck in the dip," the fat man remarks jovially when my predicament is explained.

"It'll cost you," chuckles the toothless one. "Fifty pounds an hour."

I return to the car. The fat man shows up with a tractor and a shirt. He hooks me up, pulls me back to the road, then asks, hesitantly, what I was doing. I tell him. "You want the new graveyard," he says, pointing. "Just down there. Don't take the car." He refuses payment.

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