“Sure, go ahead,” he said, and promptly went back to playing some game on his laptop.

My parents are buried at Mount Hope; my mother since 1985 and my father since 2000. I enjoy stopping by for moments of reflection, although admittedly I do not do it very often.

When it comes to visiting cemeteries, there are three types of people: those who go and spend time meditating and praying; those who go and actually talk to loved ones, almost as if they are still alive; and those who simply will not visit a graveyard.

I have relatives that fit into any of those categories (one goes and asks his deceased father questions and he seems to work through the answers doing this). I tend to think I am in the first group.

As we pulled up to the entrance, my son stared out the window with a puzzled expression.

“What are we doing here, dad?”

“This is where your grandparents are buried and I just want to find the gravesite and visit for a little while.”

He admitted later that initially he felt a bit “creeped out.”

I drove along one of the paths up to the most north-easterly part of Mount Hope where my parents are buried. Getting out of the car, I heard him say, “Can I come along, dad?”

Surprised, but delighted, I said sure.

We trudged along and after five minutes or so we found the tombstone marking John and Rita Brehl’s grave.

“What were they like,” he said. (His grandmother died long before he was born and his grandfather died when he was only four years old.)

“He was a character, she was a saint, and they were very much in love with each other,” I said. (With seven children, and me being the youngest, she had to be a saint.)

All of a sudden, my heretofore non-talkative teenager started asking questions, and a dialogue got rolling. I launched into one of my favourite stories about his grandparents:

“There was a time, back in the late 1950s, before I was born, when dad used to love getting together with his pals to play poker,” I told him.

Legend has it he lost more than he won. Sometimes a lot more.

But one Friday night (or early Saturday morning) dad came home after poker with his pockets bulging with money he had won. It was his all-time biggest score and he was going to show that wife of his that he wasn’t some poker pigeon.

So, he woke mom up and tossed all the money on the bed and jubilantly told her she could buy whatever she wanted. All that money was hers. But instead of exulting in this good fortune, mom began to cry.

“What’s wrong?” he said. “Look at all this money. It’s yours.”

“Jack, I can’t help but think of the wives whose husbands are coming home right now without their pay cheques,” she said.

That stopped dad in his tracks and, though he loved to gamble throughout his life, he never again did so recklessly as in those days.

My son shook his head, smiled and said, “I wish I had known her.”

Then we carried on talking; him asking questions, me reminiscing about our family. The conversation lasted close to an hour.

Anyone with a teenager knows that the channels of communication are not always open, and that digital devices often clutter up parent-child dialogue. But on this day we had a great talk and I have a graveyard to thank for that.

(Robert Brehl is a writer in Port Credit, Ont., and can be reached at bob@abc2.ca.)