Welcome! I'm Sara Ramsey, a novelist and former current tech worker. I recently moved back to my 430-person town in rural Iowa after two decades in San Francisco. I write about the wild and weird magic of my rural life, as well as anything else that strikes my fancy. Thank you for joining me!
SAW
Bouquets of bright plastic flowers planted alongside my family’s tombstones.
Memorial Day originally recognized Civil War veterans. Volunteers still put flags on veterans’ graves. But in rural Iowa, we’ve expanded on the official definition and decorate all our family graves at the end of May.
My mom keeps a stash of artificial flowers for Memorial Day. The stalks are spiked so that they can be driven into the dirt. For my grandparents, she makes “saddles” of artificial flowers to drape over the tombstones. She leaves the saddles all summer, but the bouquets must be collected by mid-June so they don’t impede the cemetery lawnmowers.
I didn’t have time to help my mom decorate the graves this year (thanks, day job). But last weekend I helped her undecorated them.
Our first stop was Confidence.
Confidence is a ghost town — possibly literally. The only remnant is Confidence Cemetery. 1300 graves are the final remains (pun intended) of a town that formed in 1858 and dissolved decades ago.
Confidence Cemetery is divided into the “new side” and the “old side.” Burials still happen sometimes on the new side, but the old side is full. The older graves are surrounded by a rusted fence with a gate that may fall off in the next strong wind. A small grassy hilltop pretends to be a parking lot. A wooden outhouse sits outside the gate, and my mom says it was awful when she had to use it as a kid. The outhouse probably hasn’t aged well, but I’ve never checked.
It was easy to find our family’s graves. My mom’s pretty pastel bouquets popped against the leaning, weathered stones. They were the only flowers in sight. We realized a few years ago that my mom is the last person decorating anyone’s graves in the old section. The other graves are bare, their inhabitants forgotten.
I helped my mom gather bouquets from the graves of her grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents. Her great-great-grandfather’s first name was Greenbury — the kind of name that makes me want to write a story. He was a Civil War veteran and was briefly a prisoner of war somewhere in the South. He returned to Iowa and lived to be an old man.
Greenbury died 114 years ago. No one alive remembers him, but my mom still decorates his grave every year.
We pulled the bouquet stakes from the ground, shook water and dirt off the artificial flowers, and stowed them in plastic bags for next year. We left Confidence and drove to two more cemeteries, visiting my mom’s parents, other grandparents, aunts, and uncles. She had picked up the flowers from my dad’s side of the family without me, but it’s the same situation — graves stretching back a hundred and fifty years, to some of the earliest white settlers in the county.
After we finished, we rewarded ourselves with soft serve. We ate our ice cream outside, baking in Iowa’s sauna-like heat, next to a bank that has hitching posts for Amish buggies.
My mom stated — as she does every year, as though it’s a fact — that none of these graves will be decorated again when she’s gone.
I wanted to say: “Mom, of course I’ll decorate them.”
Or, to grab her hand and say: “Mommy, of course I’ll decorate yours.”
But I didn’t answer — part teenage-style rebellion in the face of feeling baited, part doubt. Will I follow through on my intention to keep this tradition going? Or will I let go of the people I never knew?
Either way, her annual statement always makes me melancholy. I will probably decorate Greenbury’s grave someday.
But I will probably feel equally confident that no one will decorate these graves — or my grave — when I’m gone.
DID
I finally read NINE PERFECT STRANGERS by Liane Moriarty.
The book is set at a wellness retreat in the Australian wilderness where [mild spoiler] nine guests are asked to be silent for several days. Their assumptions and judgments about each other, formed in silence, are hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking. And the story twists partway through in a bonkers way that I absolutely loved.
I loved it, and I also felt like a jealous little bitch because I didn’t write it.
Not that I would have (or could have) written that book. But I went to a silent retreat in Bali in early 2017. I spent three days silently observing everyone, sipping my stash of contraband caffeinated tea, and getting devoured by ants.
I thought it was the perfect setting for a book. Silence enables secret-keeping — but also, random conversations with strangers are where I’ve heard some of the wildest stories. You can be vulnerable with someone you’ll never see again in a way that even your closest friends and lovers may never see.
NINE PERFECT STRANGERS came out in September 2018. Moriarty was probably writing it while I was at my silent retreat. Maybe the idea of silent retreats and secret lives was in the ether when I felt it in the Balinese jungle. I probably wasn’t the only person craving silence and escape after the 2016 American election cycle — although I was a sweet summer child then compared to my grizzled 2024 self.
I wish I’d had the confidence to write my version of a silent retreat book. Or the confidence to write the half dozen other wacky ideas that have floated around me these last few years. Those stories have whispered to me here and there, slipping snippets into my head when they can distract me from covid/politics/climate change/family issues/day jobs/general malaise. But I tend to revert to worrying.
I sometimes remind myself (quite cheerfully, despite the vibe of this post!) that even if no one remains to put flowers on my grave, my books could outlive me.
But on less cheerful days, I’m confident they will live on only as ghosts in the training algorithms of the AI supermachines.
HEARD
From a pharmacist, while she helped my mom: “Sara, do you want your prescription too?”
On the day we visited the cemeteries, my mom detoured through the pharmacy drive-through to grab something for my dad. I was in the passenger seat and purposefully stayed out of my mom’s conversation with the pharmacist. But when the woman came back with my dad’s prescription, she asked, unprompted, if I wanted mine as well.
I actually didn’t want my prescription. The medication wasn’t a big secret, but my mom and I don’t always view pharmaceuticals through the same lens (which is a polite way of saying we each suspect the other has been brainwashed). I hadn’t said hi to the pharmacist because I didn’t want to ask for my prescription in front of my mom. But the pharmacist was blind to social cues and possible HIPAA violations.
It often feels sweet to live someplace where people know you, where people ask how you’re doing and actually know the context of your response, where people are always trying to help.
And yet, what’s better — being known, or knowing your secrets are confidential?
I typically don’t care much about privacy — probably because I grew up without expecting it. It’s why I can write a newsletter like this. But I care about privacy just enough that I debated sending this post. In an era of doxxing and scams and confidence men, writing from my very small community feels far less safe than writing from an anonymous metropolis.
I comfort myself by thinking that if a stalker showed up asking where to find me, I would probably get multiple calls and Facebook messages warning me. And it would make for a doozy of a newsletter. The part of me that’s always looking for a story would be just the teeniest bit excited.
That said, I don’t want to test out my theory of undecorated graves and unremembered Sara Ramsey novels prematurely. So while my newsletter is factual, I do sometimes shift things so it’s not obvious when I’m home, where I’m traveling, and with whom I live.
In other words: sometimes I have to pull some small cons so that I feel confident taking you into my confidence.
Cheers,
Sara
p.s. Was that too many confidence puns today?
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I loved this!
I'm always happy when I see that one of your stories has popped into my email. I always enjoy them. Thank you!