I have a complaint. 

Grave blankets are not blankets. 

And I’m — I’m kind of annoyed they’re not blankets.  

I know, I know. It’s an odd thing to get worked up over. But I thought grave blankets were blankets and they’re not blankets and I want them to be blankets. 

See, for years, Indy and Willie laid grave blankets on their parents’ graves at Christmastime.  

And — this being Indy and Willie we’re talking about — it was not a straightforward process. 

They’d wake up early on a Sunday in December, making the ten-minute trek to Willie’s parents’ graves. 

Then they’d make the hour — hour! — drive to the Delaware County cemetery where Indy’s parents are buried. 

Then they’d go to breakfast. 

Then they’d go to church. 

For the nine o’clock service. 

In the morning. Nine o’clock in the morning. 

Why not skip church? Do the grave blankets on a Saturday? Take a weekday off? Mind my own business? 

I don’t know. But I do know this operation didn’t satisfy Indy and Willie’s itch for chaos. 

So they roped my aunt and uncle into the Great Grave Blanket Excursion. 

So besides Willie and my aunt’s parents’ graves in Roslyn and Indy’s parents’ graves in Delaware County, the lot of them would put grave blankets on my uncle’s family’s graves in Bucks County. 

And Willie and my aunt’s grandparents’ graves in Northeast Philadelphia. 

And Willie and my aunt’s great-aunt’s grave, also in Northeast Philadelphia. 

Are they Magellan? Circumnavigating the globe with grave blankets like some morbid Santa Claus?  

This year, being mindful that both Indy and my uncle went to Marion’s bar in Nepal, recognizing driving long distances is off the table for their widows, and knowing the vagaries of grief, I offered to chauffer the ladies and their grave blankets. 

They took me up on my offer, but my aunt put her foot down. 

“We’re not driving all over,” she declared. We would only lay grave blankets for my grandparents and Indy. 

I love when somebody else is the adult. 

Now, Indy is buried — wow, that was unexpectedly painful, right? — not with his own parents but with Willie and my aunt’s parents. 

I know.  

We could have buried him — for free — at Washington Crossing. But Willie never met a dollar she wasn’t eager to part with. And Willie wanted Indy with her parents. 

Even though Indy never liked my grandfather.  

Now, do I think Indy and my grandfather are duking it out six feet under? 

No. 

But in the middle of the night, when my imagination is running afoul of all reason, I think that cemetery is a most uncomfortable final resting place. 

Also, Indy would have been furious that we paid tens of thousands of dollars for something we could have had for free. My first car was a station wagon he salvaged from the trash dump. 

“Wrong,” Willie said when she caught wind of the car’s provenance. 

I never saw it again. 

On a blustery Tuesday, I packed up Willie and my aunt and headed out to buy the grave blankets. 

“I brought a tarp for your car, to protect it from pine needles,” my aunt said, which should have been my first clue that grave blankets aren’t blankets. 

I declined the tarp. I’ve had dead deer and live fish in my trunk. Pine needles are a welcome reprieve. 

Willie and my aunt stood outside the florist’s shop I’d driven them to, admiring enormous pine bough wreaths decorated with ribbon and ornaments. 

I asked where we might find the blankets. 

“These are the blankets,” Willie said. 

Those, I pointed out, were not blankets. Those were wreaths. 

“They’re blankets,” Willie said.  

“Because they blanket the ground,” my aunt added. 

“That,” I said, “is dumb.” 

Which probably wasn’t my best moment. Or my most sympathetic.  

But I found the misnomer annoying.  

Willie always says I’m too literal. Or maybe it’s the wordsmith in me. But I don’t want imagery in my funereal ornamentation.  

Willie chose a gaudy grave wreath, sodden with jeweled bows and clashing baubles. It was $95. 

“For Indy,” she said. 

Indy. Who would have taken the free grave and put his firstborn in a car with retread tires. 

“Are you sure?” I asked. “Maybe this one,” I suggested, doing my best Vanna White on a wreath with a more Spartan style and price tag.  

Willie agreed her garish pick was better suited to her mother, whose prized possession was a house cat-sized porcelain panther with a bejeweled collar. 

I loved my grandmother, but that thing is tacky. Still, I saved it when she died. My daughter found it, years ago. 

“Can I have it?” she asked, eyes wide with appreciation for the fine art I was surely missing.  

Good thing that’s genetic, am I right? 

So, for $180, we bought grave blankets that are keeping exactly nobody warm.  

No. I won’t let it go. 

The cemetery was frigid. A vicious wind tore at our exposed faces.  

“It’s so cold!” my aunt said. 

“You know what would come in handy?” I asked.   

Yeah.  

A blanket.