I was driving around the Hickory Creek Wildlife Management Area in Oklahoma with a friend one afternoon. It’s 7,000 acres beautifully typical of the whole area – an enchanting woods of oaks, red cedars, ash and elm, pecan and hickory, broken up here and there by grassy fields. The creek winds its way through on down to Lake Texoma.
We were bouncing along a gravel road when we came across an old graveyard. A small one, about the size of half a basketball court, with only a few gravestones still standing. We got out and waded through waist-high grass for a closer look.
The graveyard had a nice fence around it, but the yard itself was just bare, sandy dirt and a few weeds. The gravestones were left to fend for themselves, and most had toppled over and been buried by the years.
My friend recounted that she knew of someone who collected writings on old gravestones, so we tried to read some of what was there. It wasn’t easy, since the stone had been weather-worn for over a hundred years, but we managed to decipher a few.
One in particular, even a hundred and thirteen years later, touched me deeply. It was the gravesite of a boy aged “16 Yrs. 6 Mos. 2 Ds.”, whose gravestone had fallen over and was now looking up to the sky. It reads:
Be still sad heart and cease repining
Behind the cloud the sun’s still shining
None knew thee but to love thee
Three simple lines to express Grief , Hope, and Love.
The old graveyard is a stark reminder that for us, too, life will pass; in one hundred years, we will have been forgotten, save, perhaps, a few words carved in stone.
(?) all my (?) and children all
From you a father christ doth call
Our darling one hath gone
(yet ere) to greet us on the
blissful shore
Though dead, he still speaks
to us and asks that we continue
the work he left unfinished.
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