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Continuity

I hated being dragged to the old Pine Grove Cemetery on Sunday afternoons as a kid. The old people just wanted to slowly meander through the old gravestones, pausing here and there to pull up a weed or pick up a stray weather-beaten artificial flower. Squinting to read an eroded carving, Mimi would ask "Does that say 1898 or 1838?" Or "Was that Grandmama's second baby that died, or Grandmama's third baby that died?" Ugh. Babies that died, how sad and gruesome. Small thin markers in a row slanted backwards toward the ground, memorializing the many family infants who died before their first or second birthday. "Influenza got some of them, you know, see the dates?" I have since learned that while World War I claimed 16 million, the influenza epidemic of 1918 killed 50 million people, including many right here in South Carolina.

While Mimi and mama and sometimes Aunt Pearl discussed how some of the buried people were related to others, I would wander around and look at the different designs on the stone markers, some tall and some broad, some rugged and old, some shiny and new. I was wishing we were somewhere else, anywhere else. How dull and boring, I thought, how depressing and sad.

Why did they want to come here anyway, I wondered, the dead people aren't going to notice the new plastic chrysanthemums. But I dared not to voice that opinion too often in front of the grown-ups. Respect your ancestors, they'd say. It's out of respect for your ancestors. I'd find some interesting plant or bug or loose flower and let my imagination entertain me, until they'd finally run out of markers to read and would be ready to head home. Coffee and cake were waiting back at Mimi's, and if I didn't act terribly impatient, I'd get a big slice of almond-flavored pound cake topped with vanilla ice cream, my favorite mid-afternoon snack.

Seated around the dining room table, Mimi and mama would continue their conversation from the graveyard. They might talk about a funny incident featuring some dead cousin, or an event involving a soldier in the family. Great-great granddaddy was a Confederate soldier, wounded in the first Civil War battle at Charleston and buried at Magnolia Cemetery - your great-aunt Thomas Anna was named for him, did you know that, they'd ask me? "Yes ma'am," I'd answer, "I remember you telling me about that." (Many times, I'd add in my mind, how could I ever forget.)

They'd share stories for a leisurely hour or so around the cake and coffee pot, some poignant, some curious. Why wasn't so-and-so buried near her husband, when there was plenty of room? Why was such-and-such buried in a whole different graveyard? Scandals? Maybe. Money? Maybe. Family squabble? Maybe. Nobody knows, but everybody opined.

Over the years, I've learned that people enjoy reminiscing. They enjoy telling and hearing those gossipy stories about eccentric ancestors, filling in the blanks for each other. "You don't say!" "Well, I never would have guessed!" Articles about how things used to be are growing in popularity to the point that whole magazines are devoted to those touching or humorous accounts of the 1930's, 40's, even 50's. And these days I understand it as I never did as a child.

Continuity is conveyed to us in those memories. The links between us and past generations are strong even if invisible, and I think that's why so many folks today are creating family trees, visiting courthouses and still meandering through old graveyards. We're reading those inscriptions, appreciating the hard work and sacrifices our parents and grandparents made in the past.

Memorials are mandated in the scriptures, actually (see Joshua chapter 4). Build a memorial here and give it a name, so that you don't forget what was done here and why. We need that continuity to know where we've come from, what it cost many others to get us here, and to stir in us a sense of responsibility for generations yet to come. It might do us all good to ride out to a country cemetery some Sunday afternoon, just to put our 21st Century hurrying and scurrying into perspective.


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