Gone and Forgotten?

I walked in Woodland Cemetery the other day. Other than the sound of workers maintaining the grounds and cars driving on nearby roads, it was quiet and peaceful. I heard so many birds singing. It is a great place to reflect.

A graveyard is a memory left behind. Woodland is the final resting place of the famous people such as the Wright Brothers, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Erma Bombeck. It is also the final resting place for fathers, mothers, siblings, and relatives. For some, their gravestones are large structures. For others, it is a simple rectangle. The words used to describe individuals tells what was important: father, mother, our little angel, industrialist, veteran, together forever.

Sometimes it is a reminder of lives that have passed, with others it leaves questions.

Some gravestones, despite being quite old, are still readable. Others are so faded you cannot read any of the words on it. For those people who decided to have an upright tombstone, the stone is blank on one side and written on the other. As I walked by those gravestone, depending on which way I was going, there is no information or a lot.

There were some couples who died at nearly the same time. That got me wondering. Did they die from some event? Or was one of them heartbroken after losing their partner? So many people died in the 2021-2022 years

The dead will never really know how, and if, they are seen.

The picture I took above puzzled me. I was drawn to the long flat tombstone with so many names on it. What brings them together? A single event? Perhaps people with a commonality – service members or officers who died in the line of duty? I found out from a cemetery worker those were people who had been cremated, but still wanted to be remembered.

I wondered about people who chose that option. Why did they pay to have their name on a small plaque? Did they know their name was going to be on this large tombstone with a bunch of unrelated names? Would any family member ever be able to find this final resting place?

How would the deceased feel about the blue masking tape left there? It was blocking some people’s names. Did no one care to remove the tape? Were the names so inconsequential that no one cares for them?

Times change

With today’s mobile society, how many people’s graves are visited in a typical year? My parents are in my mind and in my dreams all of the time. That is how they remain in my life. But I have not been to my parents’ grave in many years. Is it sad that we don’t visit the graves of family members? Or just an inevitable part of life?

What is the purpose of a gravestone now? With the advent of the Internet, we leave behind so many pictures, words, and memories, is a gravestone necessary anymore? I don’t know where most of my relatives are buried. Is that important in remembering them? How many of those gravestones I passed on my walk have the same fate? They are there, but no one really knows that they are. Like the words on some stone, they are faded away.

A graveyard is a great place to reflect. It is also a way to think about how you leave your mark on this earth. It seems like the best idea is to leave something on people’s hearts while you are alive. You know that will be carried around with the living wherever they go. Otherwise, the memory of us will fade away quickly, trapped in a place rarely visited.