OLD CEMETERIES

By Jeannette Yvonne McClelland Wright

Old cemeteries have often called to me

To wander through their monuments to past humanities

Once I stood over the spot where Abraham was laid;

Places my hand on the stature of William the Conquered’s grave,

Stood within the painted room of King Tat’s tomb.

Sat quietly in the sacred place of Christ’s burial room,

And thought of the people who had lived through the earth’s years.

What were they like? What brought them joy?

What caused them to shed tears?

Even as a child, I stood, when visiting with a friend,

Beside her older sister’s grave, and thought of her within.

A 16 year old girl, who died, when life had just begun.

What hopes and plans did her heart hold?

What daydreams had she spun?

I saw her in my mind, fair, tall

With laughing, youthful eyes

Bursting with the joy of life

Or with a gentle smile.

And there beside her resting place

A little brother too;

Who had died at just six month

Because of winter’s flu.

Both graves were tended carefully

By a gentle mother’s hand

Who ne’re forgot

Through all her years

That sacred plot of land.

Since then, I’ve looked upon many a plot

And read the tombstones there.

Of young, old,

From centuries past,

On distant shores or near.

Some inscriptions were poetic and long

Full of flowery words

Others barely marked at all.

Weed encrusted, undisturbed.

Stones so covered with moss and mold

The words could not be discerned

Tombstone broken and fallen down

No one left to be concerned.

There must have been someone who cared

Back when the graves were new.

A family member? A neighbor? A friend

Who had shed a tear or two

I’ve stood before a family plot

And viewed seven little stones

Each with just he initial and the year

To mark when they were gone.

Was it an epidemic that caused them all to go?

Was it all the family taken so long ago?

I thought about my children safely tended at home

If I were left, bereft, and alone?

While visiting in Colonial Williamsburg

The Church where the Patriots prayed;

I stopped beside a crowded niche

Where some rave souls were laid.

There nestled by the Church’s wall

A tiny family plot,

A mother and her three little ones

Together on that spot.

At the foot of the mother’s grave

A stone stood stooped but tall.

Inscribed with the words of grief and pain

By the husband and father of them all.

His love was expressed

So tenderly

His children died at first

Then his gentle beloved wife

His heart, had almost burst.

Then were inscribed words of hope

Faith clung to through the years.

Of a day when the dear savior comes

To wipe away all tears

And gather us

Within his love

To live again once more

Never to die-no more graves

For us or those we adore.

And as I turned and walked away from out of that resting place;

I wondered, if in a hundred years

Someone would find my place.

Would someone stand and view my plot

And wonder over me?

What was she lie, whom did she love,

What was her destiny?

Questions fill our minds from earth’s past centuries.

The answers lie not in the grave but with eternity.