Thanksgiving 2011: Since We Were in the Neighborhood...

Thanksgiving 2011, Part One is here.
Thanksgiving 2011, Part Two is here.

After we left my great-grandparent's farm, we headed north through Little Cove to my grandparent's farm; but although we had not previously planned it, we decided to make another stop: at the cemetery of the little red-brick Methodist church that sits along the road.  My great-grandparents are buried there; and I wanted to see their tombstone again, particularly because it has the unique feature of having a sundial on the top of it.  We left Jeff, my dad, Tobin, and Shav in the warmth of the van, and the rest of us climbed out into the chilly wind to find the tombstone.  It's not a big graveyard, so our search didn't take us long.  There it was...

...the McKee plot.

Since I first learned that they were going to have a sundial on their tombstone, I've thought what a wonderful feature that is.  For some strange reason, I really, really like it.

My great-grandfather, whom I never knew (but if I had been a boy, my middle name would have been Austin after him)...

My great-grandmother, from whom I get my middle name...

One of their daughters...

My great-aunt, whom we had just visited...I wonder how it feels to know a plot of ground and a stone is awaiting one's death...

Aunt Rosa Lee's daughter Bonnie (her only child) who preceded her mother in death (from cancer--ovarian, I think)...I hear having one's child die is just about the worst thing one can experience...I know losing Bonnie left a huge void in Aunt Rosa Lee's life...

Since Jeff loves genealogy so much, he was glad for me to take pictures of some of the other tombstones in that graveyard.  I don't know my genealogy half as well as he does, so I wasn't exactly sure which stones to photograph.  But I thought I recognized John and Malinda McKee as being in my line...

...and Jeremiah and Reuhama McCulloh seemed like very familiar names to me so I figured they must have been some of my ancestors.  It's not easy to forget the name Reuhama!

A few other stones caught my eye in the short amount of time I spent snapping photographs.  This old one of Martha Ellen McCulloh interested me because the name Ellen shows up quite a few times on my mother's side of the family (it's the middle name of my mother, my sister, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother; and it goes back even further than that, although I don't know exactly how far back it goes).

And this stone of another Jeremiah McCulloh showed that he must have died as a soldier in the Civil War.

If tombstones and graveyards could talk, what stories would they tell?  What mysteries would they reveal?  To me, cemeteries are not fearful places, but they are sober: a graphic reminder that all of the people who lie buried there were once alive ...breathing...moving...talking...living...growing...laughing...crying...loving...dreaming.

  

Just like I am now.

Unless Jesus comes back first, my turn, too, will come to die and leave my body here on earth as an empty shell.  How I long to live a worthwhile life, so that when my end comes, my time will have been well-spent and my life will have been well-lived!