An Unusual Date

Yesterday Steve took the afternoon off and we hung out. We drove around town and found the local cemetery. For some reason I have a strange fascination with cemeteries; I know, probably makes me weird.

I wish I could interview those who have gone before me and see what their life was like. Why, in one case one couple lost 8 infants. Those must have been such hard times. I’m sure it was probably something minor, something that we have meds for today, but it was a devastating thing for them back then. Or how it must have felt for one family to lose their 5 year old daughter and then a month later to lose their newborn son.

It is odd to think that many of them wouldn’t know what an automobile is, let alone a microwave, TV or internet. They wouldn’t understand how to turn on a computer, what electricity is and so forth. It is odd to think that, in many cases, they are wearing clothing from the early 1800s, buried in a wooden box just 6 feet below where I stand. It made me sad to see all the infants, small children and the graves that just have a plain stone as a marker. The small nameless stones I figured are most likely babies, forever to be forgotten by those who visit today. Babies, whose parents who were so excited by their expected arrival and so saddened by their early departure are now just noted by an oversized, scarcely legible, flat rock barely poking its way out of the ground. It would be pretty interesting to know the stories behind the hundreds families who are brought together in death.

Many stones were just a flat piece of sand stone hand carved with a simple name, no dates. Johannas. I thought of those who painstakingly carved the names. I imagine many tears were shed as the tool slowly and repeatedly ran across the stone etching each letter. So simple, so plain, but yet I it represented a life of potential and joy that was snuffed out so prematurely. I was reminded of my own brother’s premature passing almost 10 years ago, and tears came to my eyes as thought about the grief that each stone represents. How many went to their own grave still mourning their loss? And then I thought about God and the hope that we have that death is not a final goodbye. We don’t grieve as the world grieves, but our hope is in Him, the one who himself came out of the grave.

After walking up and down each row, holding hands and commenting about what was on our heart as we observed, we stopped in town and quietly shared a calzone and went home. An unusual but fulfilling date; I felt somehow more connected to the town we now call home.