“God
pours life into death and death into life without a drop being
spilled.”
Author
Unknown
The whole family, toting
baskets of nippers and hand rakes, flowers and water jugs, trudged to
the top of the hill in the old Murphy cemetery. My great-aunts, Lyda
and Bess, moved slowly, but with authority—this was family, and
they were the undisputed matrons. Once at the family plot, the
baskets were set out on the grass and work began. Some of the
men-folks raked and nipped and tidied up the area around each grave,
while the women divided the flowers and urns and began creating small
arrangements. While they worked, they talked about the ones whose
bodies lay there—Elbert and Ruth, so young when they passed,
Carrie, oldest of the five sisters, ruler of the roost, little Tom
Lee, a wee-babe, my father's youngest brother, and Mary Alston, the
great-grandmother everyone said I favored. I watched. At five, my job
was simply to stay out of the way. What I remember is the reverence
with which they cared for the graves; the same care they gave the
person when they were still alive. This annual journey to the top of
Cemetery Hill on All Saints Day was their tribute to the lives lived, and
the loss remembered by those still here.
“That's hallowed
ground where, mourned and missed,
The lips repose our
love has kissed--
But where's their
memory's mansion? Is't
Yon churchyard's bower?
No! In ourselves their
souls exist.
A part of ours...”
Thomas Campbell
('Hallowed Ground')
Seneca said: “The
day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.”
This I believe. I know my family's “saints” are not in that
ground, but I do still visit the old graves from time to time, and
remember what little I know about the ones buried there. I try to
honor their memory, whether or not I knew them as living human
beings. What I remember most, especially about my great-aunts, who
have joined them now, is the love they had for one another—though
none of them were saints in the Biblical sense. They were pillars of
a family that still tries to stick together; that stands today simply
because they once lived.
Which of your saints will
you remember today? And how you will choose to honor them?
In the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment