Monday, October 28, 2013

High Field Strewn with Stones

When I was young, I spent a lot of time at my grandparents' place outside of town. My brother and I would explore the woods around their house for hours upon hours during the summers, usually bringing home fossils, flowers, strange leaves, quartz crystals and anything else that caught our eyes. We played on fallen trees and wandered through winding creeks, but one of our favorite places to visit was an abandoned cemetery, hidden in the forest on a nearby hill. We never really played there--it seemed disrespectful, even to us as children--but we loved to wander around the tombstones, kneeling down to decipher the dates through a layer of dirt and moss. We would marvel every spring as daffodils cropped up between the sinking graves, we would spend hours clearing away fallen branches, and we were never afraid.

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As morbid as it sounds, I still love cemeteries, though they always have and still do make me a little bit sad; this is not because they contain people who have died-- that's what people, all people, eventually do--but because they contain people I never knew, whose stories I never heard. Stories might be my favorite part of life, which itself is one giant story. My shelves are crammed with autobiographies, which are some of my favorites, because they aren't just the facts of a life, but the subjective experiences of the person who lived it. They're real, though they're clouded through a lens of so many cultural and experiential factors, and a little worn and warped by time...which really only makes them more human, more beautiful. I've never met a person, no matter how plain or ill-traveled, who didn't have a few worthwhile stories to tell. So in cemeteries, especially old, abandoned ones, I look around at all the gravestones and think about all the people beneath the grass. I wonder if anyone knows their stories, or I wonder if they too have been buried, lost. Lost stories of people who once lived--this is the saddest thing of all.

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6 comments :

  1. What a beautiful post, Jess! I've thought about this before, too, how so many stories and experiences are lost when someone's life ends. My mom said this was an unexpected tragedy she experienced when her mother died. All those stories about you that only your mother remembers are suddenly gone, and no one else knows them or remembers them like she did. I wish I had been old enough to know to ask my grandparents more questions before they died.

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    1. Thanks. :) My mom, thankfully, is a story collector like me. She has recorded pages and pages and pages of stories from my grandma, grandpa, and great-aunt. She said she learned things she never knew, just because she asked. My grandpa passed away after a rapid decline a year ago, and I'm so grateful she had collected all his stories. I just wish I had done the same with my dad and his dad. I remember some that they have told me, but I wonder all the time about the ones I never heard or the ones I've forgotten.

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  2. I've always been a bit morbid, but I also love old cemeteries. It's so interesting to think of the things that people experienced and lived through - and yes, depressing to think of the stories that have died with them. The top photo you have - Nancy Latimer was born in 1795 and died in 1873. She lived 77 years, amazing in that time period! She would have grown up listening to stories of the Revolution. She was seeing the news of the War of 1812, the coronation of Queen Victoria, the Civil War. In that time period, there weren't settlers in this area - she would have traveled west when Missouri was new land, populated by local tribes. When was that and what was it like? What was her family like? What was her life like? It's so fascinating to think about.

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    1. Exactly! I'm so glad someone understands me! I'm just so endlessly fascinated by other people's lives, past and present.

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  3. Did you know there's a hidden cemetery at Wilson's Creek!?!

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    1. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?! Where?! I was thinking of going this weekend.....

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