The Cemetery

When I was in kindergarten my father was the pastor of the Wesleyan Church in our town.  Thelma Roberts was an elderly member that took me under her wing as a kind of godmother at that time, though there was no such tradition in our church per se.  When my mother was in the hospital to give birth to my sister I stayed with Thelma and her husband.  

Thelma had a routine that she included me in while I was there which involved walking to a large cemetery where she would visit her family and old friends.  I remember running along in front of her on the sidewalk to find a space between a brick column and the wrought iron fence that I could squeeze through.  We would then rendezvous at the cemetery entrance.

This morning I dropped my son off at a camp that is situated out in the country about a thirty minute drive north from our house.  Somewhere along those twists and turns through farmland and forests I saw a sign for Fargo Wesleyan Church.  I made a point to check it out on my way back home and found an old cemetery behind it, so I stopped.

Walking through a cemetery seems like such an old person thing to do, but I am getting on in years I guess.  It was quiet and a bit foggy as I wandered between the tombstones and markers, some dating back to the 19th century.  Two in particular intrigued me.  They were women who died in their mid-twenties and were identified as "consorts" of a particular named man.

I've had occasion to walk through cemeteries since those times with Thelma to include an old one hidden in a neighborhood that I stumbled upon in the town where I went to college.  I made a point to walk to it one evening while the sun was setting after having listened to "Eleanor Rigby" in my dorm room.  I sat on a tombstone and watched the sun sink below the horizon.

More recently I visited my grandfather's grave in the town where my parents and sisters live.  These kinds of visits are a sobering reminder of one's mortality and of the short time we have here on this planet.  I sung the Resurrection Tropar in English, then in Greek, before leaving and had the overwhelming feeling that those lying there were listening in quiet expectation.