So, this past Monday my sister was over. We went shoe shopping for running shoes and then came back to my house where we did some outdoor gardening and such. There is a cemetary on the property we live on, a very old one. It is way up on top of a hill in a field next to our house. My husband has seen the cemetary before, but I never have. The grass is always tall in the field and once that grass gets tall you can bet that the grass in the cemetary will be tall as well, even under the trees that encase it.
Anyway. So my husband was telling my sister about the cemetary and he suggested that she and I go up there to visit it since the grass is just beginning to green up and he was home to stay with all of the kids while I went. So she and I headed up there to see it, sidestepping cow patties all the way. We get up there and start looking for a gate. We go around one side. Then another. Then the third. Then the last.
No gate. WITW? (What in the world, for those new to my Chala-lingo)
I know my husband has been in the cemetary. He has told me about how you can't read most of the gravestones. So I put in a call to him back at the house. No answer. He is probably chasing our 5 crazy kids that he isn't left alone with all that often. So my sister and I start snooping. In most places the fence is quite high, up to my chest, and there is barbed wire on top of it. Someone really didn't want anyone getting in there. (Or getting out, ha!) Finally we found a spot that we could just step over~well, my several-inches-taller-than-me little sister STEPPED. I went first and kind of bounced, clamored......whatever.
Once we were inside it was pretty neat. The oldest headstone we were able to make out said the person was born in 1805. 178 years before me. Wow. She (I believe it was a she) died in 1876. Some of the headstones were sinking into the ground. Pieces were broken off and nearly none of the names and dates were legible. My sister and I had to trace the letters with our fingers to figure out what we did. We read several names on headstones and then came to another one we were reading. A little girl, only six, daughter to the people on the headstones we had just read. We went around to the other side and her sister, 4, buried right beside her, who died in the same month and year as she did. Very sad. As a momma I cannot imagine losing two children in one month. The four year old had died at the beginning of March 1876 and the six yeard old had died at the end of March 1876. Safe in the arms of the Lord.
"Then little children were brought to Him that He might put His hands on them and pray, but the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, 'Let the little children come to Me,
and do not forbid them;
for of such is the kingdom of heaven.'"
Matthew 19:13-14 New King James Version
Running off of limited information, we found two families in the cemetary, who may well have been related by some blood link, but there were two last names. There may well have been other families, other last names but it was too hard to tell. Trees were swallowing up some of the headstones. My sister stopped and pick up a piece of one that had broken off of the main part, and poked it back on top. It was neat to see the remnants of it being cared for; one gravestone was surrounded by Irises and Daffodils, apparantly carefully planted by a loved one who either no longer visits or who may lay in a grave nearby. I told my sister that there is no telling if these people are even still where their headstones are; there has probably been a lot of shifting of the ground over time.
So, after spending a sunny, warm evening in a neat, but depressing, cemetary, my sister and I headed back to my house. I sure can find fun on a glorious spring day, huh?
This shot was taken as I was leaving the cemetary. I almost deleted it, but it has a very blair witch-esque quality to it......ok, maybe not. But I thought it was kind of cool anyway with the corner of the headstone in it and the sides all blurry because I was walking.
You never know what I'm up to, huh?
Love and Smiles,
Chala
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