A few of years ago I was driving home from one of our bluegrass campouts and I happened to pass a small graveyard. It was Sunday and an exceptionally beautiful day. Flowers were blooming at the grave sites and families were visiting their dear departed ones. I thought to myself what a wonderful thing it was that people would choose to spend their free time on such a beautiful day visiting a graveyard. They were there because the people they were visiting, bones rotting in the ground, had been and still were so important to them. What a beautiful thing!
Perhaps you’ll plant some flowers
On my poor unworthy grave
Come and sit along beside me
When the roses nod and wave
Will you miss me?
Will you miss me?
Will you miss me?
Will you miss me when I’m gone?
Graveyards have a noble purpose. They can be beautiful places, as that simple roadside graveyard was on the day I passed by. I was very happy that I noticed the graveyard on that fine day driving home from Turlock. Maybe I should have stopped and talked to some of the graveyard visitors. I might have learned some very interesting things about the people they cared about. But I was in a hurry to get home and I was left with my own thoughts. I thought about my own mortality and what happens to me and my loved ones after I die.
Of’t I’ve sung for my friends
When Death’s cold form I see
When I reach my journey’s end
Who will sing for me?
It’s not a comfortable subject to think about. Dust to dust. No matter how you slice it we all end up as worm food or ashes in the end. But which is it? I guess cremation makes more sense these days. I’m certainly not going to need this broken down body in the next life if there is one. Save some real estate and funeral costs.
When I am dead, my dearest. Sing no sad songs for me
Plant no roses at my hear nor shady cypress tree
Be the green grass above me with showers and dewdrops wet
And if thou will, remember. And if thou will forget
I’m glad we still have graveyards. To wander through an old graveyard and read the worn headstones is a trip back in time. Who were these people? What were their lives like?
Sometimes at night I often wonder
Will we all be together one day?
And each night as I wander through the graveyard
Darkness finds me as I kneel to pray
White doves will mourn in sorrow
The willow will hang it’s head
I live my life in sorrow
Since Mother and Daddy are dead
I live three thousand miles from my parents’ grave in South Carolina but if I am ever near there I do make a visit. I visited over the holidays last year but before that I hadn’t visited for ten years or so. I took my kids with me and they got to experience being with the grandparents they never knew. There’s nothing like reflecting in the presence of a tangible reminder of the people who meant more to you than anybody else.
Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, lord, by and by
There’s a better home a-waiting
In the sky, lord, in the sky
I’ll close with verses from another bluegrass classic about another grave, also three thousand miles away, It’s one of my all time favorite Stanley Brothers songs. And it reminds me of all the military veterans who gave their lives to protect our freedom and whom we all should honor, not just on Memorial Day a couple of weeks from now but every day:
Somewhere here among these many thousands
Of Americans who died true and brave
That’s where I know I’ll find him resting
So I’m here, searching for his grave
You ask me, stranger, why I made this journey
You ask me, stranger, why I made this journey
Why cross three thousand miles of rolling waves
Like many others, my love was killed in action
That’s why I’m here, I’m searching for his grave
