From the Bench
WANDERING IN A GRAVEYARD ON A RAINY DAY
Some people hate cemeteries. I don’t. There is a lot of history…a lot of memories… buried there. And if you let your imagination roam, there are a lot of stories. One for every marker.
I was wandering around Rose Hill Cemetery in the rain earlier in the week, on election day. We had it to ourselves, the monuments and I.
Even in cemeteries, folks keep trying to feed their egos. There is the Ty Cobb mausoleum up on the hill near the gazebo. It’s not hard to find. Right in the middle of the cemetery on high ground. The only mausoleum we have.
Ty’s parents are entombed there with him. His mother shot his father when Ty was a young man, just starting his brilliant career. The circumstances were questionable, and some say Ty never got over it.
Maybe that’s why he was always so angry, fighting to prove himself every day. That, and the fact that his father didn’t think much of baseball as a career.
The cold marble mausoleum sits silently in the rain….still trying to affirm…still seeking approval.
Farther up the hill, a man and wife lie with three or four tiny bits of marble at their feet….like a delicate string of pearls. The inscriptions show that none lived for more than three days.
The pain and heartache can only be imagined.
The monuments come in all shapes, and sizes, and inscriptions. Scattered all over the landscape.
At the top of the hill, fenced in under the dripping oaks, are the ones we knew and the ones we heard about. One was born when Thomas Jefferson was President. His son wore the Gray, and lived to tell about it, but told little.
The ones we knew lived under the roof where this is being written. They left a lot of love…a lot of memories. And a lot to live up to.
It is quiet there now, under the oaks…..only the sound of the rain sifting through the leaves.
Walking in the rain in a graveyard. On what many would call "an historic election day."
Crazy? Maybe. Then again, perhaps not. Perhaps just a good place to put life in perspective, while the world shouts about things that seem important today, but may not seem quite so important when the clouds go away and a new sunrise comes.