Tag: cemetery

Feeling Them Resting There

May 26, 2025 barnstormingblog1 Comment

The sunlight now lay over the valley perfectly still.
I went over to the graveyard beside the church
and found them under the old cedars…
I am finding it a little hard to say that I felt them resting there,
but I did…

I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated
with presences and absences,
presences of absences,
the living and the dead.
The world as it is
would always be a reminder
of the world that was,
and of the world that is to come.
~Wendell Berry in Jayber Crow

In great deeds, something abides.
On great fields, something stays.
Forms change and pass; bodies disappear;
but spirits linger,
to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls.

And reverent men and women from afar,
and generations that know us not and that we know not of,
heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field,
to ponder and dream; and lo!
the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom,
and the power of the vision pass into their souls.

This is the great reward of service.
To live, far out and on, in the life of others;
this is the mystery of the Christ,
–to give life’s best for such high sake
that it shall be found again unto life eternal.
~Major-General Joshua Chamberlain, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1889

A box of over 700 letters, exchanged between my parents from late 1941 to mid-1945, sat unopened for six decades.

I started reading. I felt them resting in those inked words.

My parents barely knew each other before marrying quickly on Christmas Eve 1942 – the haste due to the uncertain future for a newly trained Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps. They only had a few weeks together before she returned home to her rural teaching position and he readied himself to be shipped out for the island battles to come.

They had no idea they would not see each other for another 30+ months or even see each other again at all. They had no idea their marriage would fall apart 35 years later and they would reunite a decade after the divorce for five more years together before Dad died of cancer at age 73.

A presence of absence: the letters do contain the long-gone but still-familiar voices of my parents, but they are the words and worries of youngsters of 20 and 21, barely prepared for the horrors to come from war and interminable waiting. When he was fighting battles on Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian, no letters or news would be received for a month or more, otherwise they tried to write each other daily, though with minimal news to share due to military censorship. They speak mostly of their desire for a normal life together rather than a routine centered on mailbox, pen and paper and waiting – lots and lots of waiting.

I’m not sure what I hoped to find in these letters. Perhaps I hoped for flowery romantic whisperings and the poetry of longing and loneliness. Instead I am reading plain spoken words from two people who somehow made it through those awful years to make my sister and brother and myself possible.

Our inheritance is contained in this musty box of words bereft of poetry. But decades later my heart is moved by these letters – I carefully refold them back into their envelopes and replace them gently back in order. A six cent airmail stamp – in fact hundreds and hundreds of them – was a worthwhile investment in the future, not only for themselves and their family to come, but for generations of U.S. citizens who tend to take their freedom for granted.

Thank you, Dad and Mom, for the early years together you gave up to make today possible for us and the generations to follow.

I hear the mountain birds
The sound of rivers singing
A song I’ve often heard
It flows through me now
So clear and so loud
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home

It’s carried in the air
The breeze of early morning
I see the land so fair
My heart opens wide
There’s sadness inside
I stand where I am
And forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home

This is no foreign sky
I see no foreign light
But far away am I
From some peaceful land
I’m longing to stand
A hand in my hand
…forever I’m dreaming of home
I feel so alone, I’m dreaming of home
~Lori Barth and Philippe Rombi “I’m Dreaming of Home”

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More Precious than Roses

May 25, 2025 barnstormingblog3 Comments

I am not resigned to the shutting away
of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look,
the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses.
Elegant and curled
Is the blossom.
Fragrant is the blossom. I know.
But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes
than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay “Dirge Without Music”

Each Memorial Day weekend without fail,
we gather with family, have lunch, reminisce,
and trek to a cemetery high above Puget Sound
to catch up with our relatives who lie there, still.

Some for over 110 years, some for barely more than a decade,
some we knew and loved and miss every day,
others not so much as they are unknown to us
except on genealogy charts,
names and dates and stones and stories:

the red-haired great-grandmother who died too young,
the aunt who was eight when lymphoma took her,
the grandmother who dreamed of world travel too late,
the great-grandfather Yukon river boat captain,
the grandfather logger and stump farmer,
the great aunt unmarried school teacher who hid an oil well,
the two in-laws who forever lie next to each other
but could not co-exist in the same room while they lived and breathed.

Yet we know each of these
(as we know ourselves and others)

could be tender and kind, though flawed and broken,
had been beautiful and strong, though wrinkled and frail,
was hopeful and faithful, though too soon in the ground.

We know this about them
as we know it about ourselves:
someday we too will feed roses,
the light in our eyes transformed into elegant swirls
emitting the fragrant scent of heaven.

No one asks if we approve.
Nor am I resigned to this
though I know:
So it is, so it has been, so it will be for me
someday.

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Dreaming of Home

May 26, 2024 barnstormingblog4 Comments

In great deeds, something abides.
On great fields, something stays.
Forms change and pass; bodies disappear;
but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls.
And reverent men and women from afar,
and generations that know us not and that we know not of,
heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field,
to ponder and dream; and lo!
the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom,
and the power of the vision pass into their souls.
This is the great reward of service.
To live, far out and on, in the life of others;
this is the mystery of the Christ,
–to give life’s best for such high sake
that it shall be found again unto life eternal.
~Major-General Joshua Chamberlain, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1889

A box of over 700 letters, exchanged between my parents from late 1941 to mid-1945, sat unopened for decades until last year. I started reading.

The letters do contain the long-gone but still-familiar voices of my parents, but they are the words and worries of youngsters of 20 and 21, barely prepared for the horrors to come from war and interminable waiting. When he was fighting battles on Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian, no letters or news would be received for a month or more, otherwise they tried to write each other daily, though with minimal news to share due to military censorship. They speak mostly of their desire for a normal life together rather than a routine centered on mailbox, pen and paper and waiting, lots and lots of waiting.

I’m not sure what I hoped to find in these letters. Perhaps I hoped for flowery romantic whisperings and the poetry of longing and loneliness. Instead I am reading plain spoken words from two people who desperately wanted to have a home together. They somehow made it through those awful years to make my sister and brother and myself possible.

Thank you, Dad and Mom, for what you gave up to make today possible.

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Hard to Hide

July 28, 2023 barnstormingblog2 Comments

I saw a deer skeleton
gracing the roadside
and didn’t stop to wonder
where the flesh had gone,
why just a tuft of fur clung,
a bit of tail.
Didn’t pause to ponder
its change from leaping-warmth
to cold, clean bones.
Didn’t stop but glimpsed
crisp, dark lines against snow,
rib cage, long legs, perfect spine—
what we with mounded dirt,
neat lawn, and flowered stones
seek so hard to hide—
I drove quickly by.
~Laura Foley, “Intuition” from It’s This

I drive a night-darkened country road, white lines sweeping past,
aware of advancing frost in the evening haze,
anxious to return home to fireplace light.

Nearing a familiar corner, a stop sign looms,
to the right, a rural cemetery sits silently expectant.

Open iron gates and tenebrous headstones,
in the middle path, incongruous, a car’s headlights beam bright.
I slow, thinking: lovers or vandals might seek inky cover of night.

Instead, these lights illuminate a lone figure, kneeling graveside,
one hand resting heavily on a stone, head bowed in prayer.

A stark moment of solitary sorrow,
invisible grieving of the heart focused in twin beams,
impossible to hide.

A benediction of mourning; light piercing the heart’s blackness,
as gentle fingertips trace the engraved letters of a beloved name.

As an uneasy witness, I withdraw as if touched myself
and drive on into the night, struggling to see
through the thickening mist of my eyes and the road.

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To Keep From Being Forgotten

May 29, 2022May 29, 2022 barnstormingblog1 Comment

I like to stroll the graveyard in the middle of town
With my friend Anne, though we seldom agree
On what an epitaph we happen to read implies.
I’m inclined to find the one-line gravestone,
Dr. Noah Vedder, M.D., as sadly comic.
If we can’t take our money into the dark,
I read it as saying, at least we can take our titles.
But Anne, whose sympathies are aroused
More quickly than mine, reads it more darkly
As confessional. Here is the man’s admission
That he saw himself as a better doctor
Than he was a friend, or father, or husband,
A better listener in his office than at home.

If his kin were responsible for the inscription,
Its terseness, I say, may suggest they were moved
More by duty than they were by love.
But for her, its terseness seems to imply
Their painful acknowledgment that no praise
Inscribed on the stone would keep their friend
From being forgotten soon after they would be.
And behind this truth she hears a protest:
If the world were fair, he wouldn’t be sentenced
To endless retirement but allowed to practice,
In a life beyond this one, the profession he loved.

What use would a doctor be, I ask, in a realm
Where bodies are laid aside? But for her the point is
That those who knew him were certain that if
Such a realm existed and a doctor were called for there,
He’d volunteer, glad to hold office hours
And glad after hours to visit patients
Too sick to leave home,
However modest the streets they lived on,
However winding and poorly lit.
~Carl Dennis “At the Graveyard with Anne”

Since my people are crushed, I am crushed;
    I mourn, and horror grips me.
Is there no balm in Gilead?
    Is there no physician there?
Why then is there no healing
    for the wound of my people?
Jeremiah 8:21-22

We physicians can be an arrogant lot in our devotion to our profession above all else in our lives – I’ve known a few who wear their M.D. title full-time like a banner and shield to prove their expertise.

The only time the label M.D. is relevant is on a name tag in a clinical setting and often it doesn’t even make a difference there. We do what we can with what knowledge we possess from our training, as limited as it is. There is so much that we don’t know and don’t understand.

Even so, there are many altruistic physicians who give of themselves 24 hours a day for their lifetime. Some would gladly continue their healing efforts long after they have become dust, yet those skills are no longer needed. In heaven, all are already healed.

Our healing comes from beyond our expertise, from a balm that can never be prescribed. We have a Great Physician who never forgets us, even when we are crushed and mourning, when all seems hopeless with our wounds so incredibly deep.

We are not forgotten.

Every face is in you, every voice,
Every sorrow in you.
Every pity, every love,
Every memory, woven into fire.
Every breath is in you, every cry,
Every longing in you.

Every singing, every hope,
Every healing, woven into fire.
Every heart is in you,
Every tongue, every trembling in you,
Every blessing, every soul,
Every shining, woven into fire.
~Michael Dennis Browne

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The Presence of Absence

May 28, 2022 barnstormingblog2 Comments

The sunlight now lay over the valley perfectly still. I went over to the graveyard beside the church and found them under the old cedars… I am finding it a little hard to say that I felt them resting there, but I did… I saw that, for me, this country would always be populated with presences and absences, presences of absences, the living and the dead. The world as it is would always be a reminder of the world that was, and of the world that is to come.
Wendell Berry in Jayber Crow

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
~Mary Oliver from “When Death Comes”

Today, as always over the last weekend of May, we have a family reunion where most turn up missing. A handful of the living come together for lunch and then a slew of the no-longer-living, some of whom have been caught napping for a century or more, are no-shows.

It is always on this day of cemetery visiting that I feel keenly the presence of their absence: the great greats I never knew, a great aunt who kept so many secrets, an alcoholic grandfather I barely remember, my grandmother whose inherent messiness I inherited, an aunt who died of lymphoma as a young child, my parents who separated and divorced for ten years late in life, yet reunited long enough for their ashes to rest together for eternity.

It is good, as one of the still-for-now living, to approach these plots of grass with a wary weariness of the aging. But for the grace of God, there will I be sooner than I wish to be. There, thanks to the grace of God, will I one day be an absent presence for my children and grandchildren to ponder.

The world as it is remembers the world that was. The world to come calls us home in its time, where we all will be present and accounted for — our reunion celebration.

All in good time.

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A Humble and Silky Life

May 24, 2022 barnstormingblog3 Comments

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open —
pools of lace,
white and pink —

and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again —
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?
~Mary Oliver from New And Selected Poems

White peonies blooming along the porch
send out light
while the rest of the yard grows dim.
Outrageous flowers as big as human
heads! They’re staggered
by their own luxuriance: I had
to prop them up with stakes and twine.
The moist air intensifies their scent,
and the moon moves around the barn
to find out what it’s coming from.
In the darkening June evening
I draw a blossom near, and bending close
search it as a woman searches
a loved one’s face.
~Jane Kenyon “Peonies at Dusk”

This coming weekend, I will bring our peonies
to the graves of those from whom I came,
to lay one after another exuberant floral head
upon each headstone,
a moment of connection between those in the ground
and me standing above, acknowledging its thin space
when one more humble and silky life shatters,
its petals slowly
scatter, lush and trembling,
to the wind.

Let my soul rise up to meet You
As the day rises to the sun
Let my soul rise up to meet You
Let that patient kingdom come

When’s the last time you felt steady in the chaos?
Hear the sound when the seed falls to earth
Is it time to give up your destination?
Slow me down, let love do its work
Let my soul rise up to meet You

As the trees and hummingbirds lead the chorus
They work so hard, and their center so still
Is it time for a change in direction?
Slow me down where I bend to Your will

Slow me down Slow me down
Let love do its work

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