Trip Through Time

One of my favorite things to do is walk in our town's cemetery.  My mom and I walk there frequently in the summer.  It's peaceful, and usually we have the place nearly to ourselves.  Occasionally there may be another person or two there, or the lawn crew may be working.  But, for the most part, the cemetery is an undiscovered gem.  While parks and paths are crowded with people, the cemetery is quietly empty.

Yesterday, my husband, our daughter, and I, went for a walk in the cemetery.  All of the various flowering trees are in bloom, and the entire place was filled with their sweet scents.  Add to that the clean smell of freshly cut grass, and each breath was like inhaling a bit of Heaven.  The cool of the evening settled around us and made our walk the perfect evening activity.  

This is a common area in the center of the cemetery.  There is a bench, not shown in the picture, that is a perfect place to sit and enjoy the beauty of the place.

I know some people find it creepy and are uncomfortable being in a cemetery.  The thought of being among the dead is unsettling to them.  For me, it is a place of remembering.  I don't believe cemeteries are haunted by the dead.  There is actually a lot of love in a cemetery.  The monuments for each person there a tribute, some of them very carefully chosen and thought out, so they're just right for the person they are commemorating.  While some graves only have the small metal marker provided by the cemetery, the vast majority have something more personal. Along with the usual name, date of birth and date of death, poems, sayings, favorite verses from the Bible, and even photos appear on some headstones, all put there to say, "This person lived and was loved".

I find it so interesting to look at all of the different monuments in the cemetery.  Some of the very old stones are showing their age and need repaired or replaced.  There are homemade grave markers that are so different and unique, that I wonder about the person they were made for.  We often look for the oldest grave, so far a date of death in the late 1800's is the oldest we've found.  Since our town doesn't go back much beyond that, it probably is the oldest grave there.  I can't remember where it is exactly, but I will find it again this summer, and this time I will take a picture so I will remember it more clearly.

These are some of the homemade markers:

The cemetery is full of history, and is a little like taking a trip through the past.  For me, it is not creepy or scary, but a soothing and even uplifting place.  While I recognize some of the names outside of my own family buried there, most of them are people I never saw, or knew, while they were living.  That's ok.  Their stones quietly tell me they were here.