Stone's Throw
Skylark Elizabeth took her first Way-Too-Cold-and-Windy-and-We-Were-All-Severely-Underdressed Walk the other day. Truth be told, she told me she'd rather not do any walking, so I carried her, instead.
Our destination was the tiny cemetery a hill away, for the chief purpose of climbing a few gloriously thick-limbed trees. The bigger girls have been riding their bikes there during Run Around Outside time, but I told Annika she couldn't climb the trees unless I was present, not because I'm a mean mother, but because anyone who happened to drive past at 12:30 and see three school-age girls climbing trees in a cemetery might call the truant officer.
This cemetery is populated mostly by people who died before the Civil War began, and it was overgrown and neglected until the man who lives across the road began faithfully tending it (I've only seen it tended because he's been doing this for as long as I can remember).
This headstone had already been buried in the roots of the tree that grew up beside it.
We'll have to make rubbings of many of the stones in order to read the text, but this stone was etched deeply and clearly enough for Lucinda to notice a similar name.
It's a sobering headstone and epithet at the bottom, but Luci was tremendously cheerful about it.
2 comments :
I love old cemeteries too! What does the inscription say on Lucy's headstone? We found some interesting headstones in Arkansas last September. Some of the were quite funny because the headstone carver couldn't spell very well, but others were sad because they were young people and children.
Stop here young friends as you pass by
As you are now so once was I
As I am now soon you will be
Prepare for death and follow me.
The great number of babies and young people whose headstones we read in older cemeteries always makes me grateful for the ease of our modern world in some ways. I don't have to fear dying each time I get pregnant (though I could die, of course), but in those days, death from such was pretty common.
And that makes me laugh about the carver,though I probably shouldn't. It sure would put a new spin on this epithet!
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