Don't Walk There!

I love cemeteries, especially the older ones with great headstones. Growing up, we spent many Memorial Day weekends in the small cemetery in my dad's home town. My brothers, cousin Mike and I would run searching for the headstones with the little lambs and baby angels. My grandfather made a cement slab for one friend's grave and we would take turns lying on it. We kept a close eye out for my grandmother who would not have approved. She always warned us to be careful where we walked because it was disrespectful to walk on "someone." To this day, I still try to walk around the grave but in these new perpetual cemeteries, it can be hard to figure out exactly the pathway. I walk and hop my way through the spaces.

In the cemetery in my mother's home town, there is a small, rectangular marker, flat and even with the ground that reads "Poad Nash." I love that name and created this great story about some poor farmer who had lost his whole family to the "summer complaint" and became the town drunk. My maternal grandmother shot down that story by telling me he was just a hard-working bachelor farmer.

Also in that cemetery are the graves of my grandfather's infant brothers and sisters. I think there are five, six or seven buried there. My great-grandmother gave birth to one baby just a few days before the next older one died, only to lose the newborn a few months later. I always marvel over her strength to carry on.

My children grew up going to these old cemeteries as well as the one where my dad and brother are buried. And, for the three years I taught 5th grade, I would organize a day at the very small cemetery that served the early community our school was named after. The students studied math, family trees, creative writing, art with gravestone rubbings, and history surrounded by the dead.

I like to think I just passed on the love for these wonderful spaces. And, yes, I often found myself telling my kids or my students not to walk on there.