Cemetery Stories

Cemeteries are sacred places.  Memories are written around those graves.  Stories are told from the tombstones.  And, imagination and experience enables those who pass by to consider what it might have been like for folks of other days who came to lay a love one to rest.  Grief and love brings unique moments to those places.  When Felder's wife died, he made a daily trip to her grave.  Always he read poetry to her that he had written and when he went to where she lay, he continued the act of love.  And, then there were those late afternoon moments when so many of us in that small town knew Felder was visiting with Libba because we could hear the music sent forth to her from his trumpet.    

When I was a boy growing up, it was a trip my sister and I counted on making at least one a week with our mother.  Daddy was buried out in a country cemetery accessible by dirt roads and a ford across a creek.  It was a small church cemetery filled with the graves of so many whose DNA I shared.  It became sacred ground for me long before I understood the meaning of something being considered holy.   

Perhaps, it explains why I have always been partial to church cemeteries.  To see the cemetery outside the window while worshiping reminds those who sit of the Ash Wednesday message, "Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return,"  but it also is a visible sign of the communion of the saints.  Some of us sit inside while others who once sat beside us have entered into glory to be a part of that great crowd of heavenly witnesses.  To worship in such a place reminds us we are here, but there is our Home.