The world was still wet, and the debris of the previous night’s bacchanalities was scattered about the neighborhood: the shattered paper casings of fireworks, broken liquor bottles, beer cans, and an unfired 9mm hollow point bullet. The sight of the bullet brought my walk to a sudden pause. The bullet lay in the street feet from where my son normally stands to wait for the bus. The neighborhood has shown some troubling signs of late. The police have been at the neighbor’s house at least three times in the last four months. They were there at least once with guns drawn. During a walk last summer, I found a knife in the grass only twenty yards from where I found the bullet.
Unsure what the exact protocol was for finding an undischarged bullet, I pocketed the bullet and continued my walk. I moved my camera and keys to the other pocket when the irrational story line flashed through my imagination, “Teacher maimed by bullet accidentally set off by camera in pocket.”
I am not sure what drew me into the cemeteries on this day. On a day of celebration for the possibilities of a new year, I ended up meditating on those lost to the past. I visited two cemeteries over the course of my perambulation.
One is ancient (by local standards) and has been ostensibly adopted by the county police department as a part of the county “adopt a cemetery” program. It sits long out of use, neglected and overgrown, sandwiched between a suburban neighborhood and a church. The cemetery is quite small and cars roar past on the four-lane road bearing drivers oblivious that the little copse of trees houses the eternal resting place of the remains of a few dozen souls.
The other cemetery is nearly as old but is still in use. That is, fresh bodies are still being added. The further one walks into it, the older the remains one comes across until one finally comes to an area of unfinished and uninscribed stones. Simple rocks rise from the grass where they were placed with care over a hundred years ago. Some have fallen over, never to rise again. A few family plots are still well maintained. A handful of headstones have been filled out with all but the date of death and the body to be added. Plastic flowers look to have been recently added to several graves and not so recently to several others.
I have an odd fascination with cemeteries. My interest is part historical curiosity and part fear of mortality. The inscriptions, the dates, the names, and the groupings tell a story that moves me to melancholy. An incomplete story, but a story made all the more tragic by the fact that all of the principal characters are dead and no one remembers their tales. One is struck by ironic headstones claiming, "Gone, but not forgotten" while crumbling with neglect and standing over sunken graves. I am stirred by the challenge to interpret the little information I am given into the semblance of a narrative that will honor those buried beneath me.
I came across the grave of a Korean War veteran and his wife. They (or someone) chose to add the date of their marriage to their headstone); that date was 1953. One can guess that he came home from the war and got quickly married.
Every male in the very large Rogers family served in the Coast Guard during World War II (I think I counted six of them).
One comes across heartbreaking tragedy. Beside one couple’s headstone were five miniature headstones; each was for a child that died in infancy and was a reminder of the precarious nature of life a hundred years ago.
I was startled to come across a couple that shares my family name. Edward H. lived from 1903-1953 and Ethel M from 1903-1986. I have a fairly unique surname. I wonder if they are related to me somehow. I shall probably never know.
On my way out I came across three headstones that still have me wondering. The one for Sarah Frances Green first got my attention.
The simple inscription, “Our loved one”, drew me in for a second look. She was only twelve when she died. Her parents are buried right next to her. Her father was a Mason. There are no other family graves. The inscription "Our loved one" seems to imply she was an only child. What tragedy took her? Illness or an accident? Perhaps a mishap with one of the new motorcars? How many times did her mother travel to her daughter's grave over the fifty-three years ensuing years before she herself was laid to rest between her loved one and her husband, or was the pain too strong to bear?
Standing over their graves, the feeling that overwhelms me is not sadness in Sarah Frances' death, but the very loss of her memory. Mostly likely, no one alive today knows why she died. What is on that tombstone is probably the only record of her that survives that anyone is likely to see or read. No one lives who remembers her laugh, or her voice, or the color of her hair. No one can tell me what it was about her that made her “Our loved one.”
It is prospect of discovering stories that draw me into cemeteries. It was stories that drew me into the history profession. One day, I hope to bring a group of students to a cemetery on the first day of class to get them thinking about the creation of stories from evidence and the tragedy of forgotten history. The way I see it, a cemetery is a great big primary source. Until then, I shall wonder where this bullet in my pocket came from.
Peace
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