A Piedmont Porchlight Story

People who’ve never spent much time in cemeteries imagine they’re all alike. Rows of stones. A few trees. Some flowers. Maybe a flag or two.

Spend forty years workin’ at Magnolia Mortuary, though, and you learn better. Graveyards are a lot like people. Every one of ’em has a personality all its own. Some are friendly. Some are lonely. Some look like they’re waitin’ on company. Others seem perfectly content to be left alone.

I don’t find cemeteries sad. Never have. I suppose that’s because I never saw ’em as places where life ended. They’re places where stories settled down. Take the old church cemetery over on the hill. If you’ve ever driven past it on a Saturday afternoon, you’ve seen what I mean.

The grass is trimmed like somebody measured every blade. The marble shines. Fresh flowers seem to appear almost every week. American flags stand beside veterans every Memorial Day. Somebody always notices when a shepherd’s hook starts leanin’.

Children chase butterflies there after homecoming dinner while their parents visit grandparents they still talk to like they’re just inside the church fellowship hall. It’s peaceful. Comfortable. If cemeteries could smile, that one would.

Then there’s the old country graveyard a few miles outside town. You won’t find it unless somebody tells you where to turn. The road narrows to little more than two tire tracks, and blackberry briars seem determined to reclaim the whole place. Half the stones lean. Some have fallen altogether. Rain and time have rubbed names smooth until only the dates remain.

A cedar tree grows right through the middle of one family plot as though it decided those folks deserved a little shade. Every now and then I’ll wander through there, brush leaves away from a marker, and wonder who brought flowers the last time. Twenty years ago? Thirty? Maybe longer.

It isn’t neglected because nobody loved those people. It’s neglected because everyone who remembered them eventually joined ’em. There’s a difference. That old graveyard has a quietness about it. Not lonely exactly. More like… Patient. As though it understands time better than the rest of us ever will.

My favorite, though, has always been the little family cemeteries. You’ve seen ’em. Half an acre behind a farmhouse. A rusty gate that squeaks like it’s announcin’ the Second Comin’. Maybe six graves. Maybe twenty. Three generations restin’ within conversational distance of one another.

You can almost reconstruct an entire family just by readin’ the stones. Here lies Mama. Beside her is Daddy. There’s the little girl who lived only eight months. The son who came home from the Great War. The daughter who never married but spent sixty-eight years teachin’ school.

Then, off by himself beneath the old oak… Pawpaw. Don’t ask me why Pawpaw’s always a little off to himself. He just is. Every family cemetery seems to have one.

Walk through one of those little plots and you begin to understand a family without ever meetin’ a soul. Who’s buried together. Who’s buried apart. Whose stone is worn smooth from visitors’ hands. Who still gets fresh flowers. Who gets pennies left on the marker. Who gets little toy tractors because grandchildren remember. Who gets a tiny stuffed bear because somewhere, a mama still thinks about the baby she never really got to raise.

Those aren’t decorations. They’re conversations. One of the greatest privileges of my life was escortin’ folks to these places. Not because I enjoyed funerals. Nobody does. But because, after everyone else went home, I often stayed behind for a minute. I’d straighten a ribbon. Pick up a blown limb. Stand my hat back on my head and take one last look.

Over the years I came to realize somethin’. A cemetery never tells you very much about the people buried there. It tells you almost everything about the people still livin’. Whether they remember. Whether they forgive. Whether they come back. Whether they tell the children who these folks were.

The dead don’t ask much of us. Just a name spoken now and then. A story retold. A flower in the spring. A laugh over something that happened fifty years ago. That’s enough.

As I get older, I find myself visitin’ cemeteries a little more often than I used to. Not because I have more friends there than here. Though, if I’m bein’ honest, the scales are beginnin’ to tip. I go because they’re peaceful places to think. Places where nobody’s in a hurry. Places where the arguments have all ended. Places where every stone quietly reminds us that life was never measured by how long we stayed. Only by whether somebody still smiles when they remember we were here.

And if you ask me, that’s a mighty fine personality for any place to have.