sticks and stones

I love cemeteries. I especially like old cemeteries, they feel so rich with history. I think about all the stories that lie beneath the land, all the lives lived. I love the headstones, the dates, the names. I love small family plots on the side of the road or the back end of a property. I like the metamorphosis of funerary art. Old New England headstones are my favorite. There are three cemeteries in the area that I visit a couple of times a year because I have family buried in each. I talk, I clear the debris, I leave a stone. Regardless of what might happen after death I somehow feel a connection to something greater than today when I walk through the mazes. I wonder, walking through, how many don't have visitors, don't have someone to clear the sticks or leave a stone. I think about all of the bodies interred below the surface without a name on a headstone for someone to even know their bodies are there. I believe that we each carry a piece of all of those in our family who have come before us; without them we wouldn't be here today. In my family the men worked mines, they made paper, they drove horses, they worked their land. The women kept their families strong, warm, fed, comforted and well. I believe that I owe them all a little something. I wish that there was a contribution I could make to the world to honor the contribution that they made to me. I think about the wars they fought, the children they raised, the hardships they faced, the journeys they made. I can only hope that the life I live begins to repay that debt...