A Time To Think About Those Who Preceded Us

MY VISITS

I occasionally pay a visit to a cemetery usually to visit my family. During such a visit I sometimes would walk about and look at other sites.  I would stop and pay a visit from time to time and take some pictures. On an emotional level over time I began to acquire a profound respect for those lying beneath my feet. They were monuments and family tombs as well as an ocean of stones or markers. There were clear chiseled markers with profound or clever sayings and occasional stones with some lines of poetry. There were stones for slaves some with a just a first name most others with nothing written. There were stones where the aged engraving was no longer readable. There were other stones where cryptic statements would read "Baby daughter died 3 MOS..." There were stones with nothing written and I wondered was a body present there. What I came to appreciate as I walked among the stones and markers was the human beings that once lived. Fools and saints, predators and victims, the innocent, the troubled the unloved, the ones who never grew to develop a complete personality. Failures, happy souls, philosophers and the self absorbed. Those who could and did love and others who could only love themselves.  All Honors to them all for their time spent here.