waking the dead

wednesday evening it was my turn to take the girls to vbs (found another one!). we arrived slightly early and they are 9, so they wanted out of the truck to get into mischief.

i tried to distract them as long as possible and finally they decide they want to go to the cemetary.

i told them

you are so loud, you could wake the dead. and probably better be quiet.

they laughed, and my girl's new bff said,

all they can do is pass through us. they can't hurt us (meaning the dead of course).

which i thought very profound for a child. fearless. a real well adjusted kid, which is why i don't mind my child hanging out with her.

on the way to the church, which is surrounded by cemetaries, one large one across the road, but this is an old wooden one room chapel type church with a small detached building used for children's ministries. these two buildings are separated by gravestones, and a cemetary.

the girls wandered through this section of the cemetary as i sat in the truck reading, watching them go from headstone to headstone via my rearview mirror.

passing a cemetary on the way that night, my girl tells me,

that night we went camping with that other troop

yeah,

i said

they told scary stories. and i listened.

i was out by the fire, so i had no idea what they were doing in there. but i saw a ghost stories book the next morning and wondered.

of course, i'm none too pleased about this, but my sister and i read ghost stories when we were girls. one night up late, it was dark (that is the time for these things, is it not?), we were reading about the undead, and we lived in a townhome. my mom and dad had gotten divorced and we were relatively comfortable in these temporary digs. we moved a lot then.

all of the sudden, we heard something run up the stairs and slam a door.

my sister launched the book and we never read ghost stories again. it was probably just the neighbor getting home and being incredibly rude. but my sis and i had over active imaginations having watched every wretched show we wanted or were shown by adults who lacked sense to know better than to show such things to kids.

so i got out of my truck at the end of vbs and stood at the leaning wrought iron fence and read. looking out over the headstones. some tall as spires. others tiny tictac shaped slabs of marble. others cobblestone blocks. there were arlington national cemetery type boogie board shaped marble, these leaned rather severely. all of them, the dearly departed. all of them, reminders of the passing of time. all of them telling their own stories of triumph and loss through one little dash embraced by a couple dates.

quite a sobering sight. i wondered when the church became such a set apart thing. no more surrounded by the ancients. no more reminder of the past and inevitable future of us all. we saunter in and out of church, or at least i do, never thinking about how short our lives really are.

we shuttle off to some distant cemetary, plop the casket in the grave, and shuttle back. it is all very disconnected. living, dying. but in these old churches, the dead become reminders of this fleeting life.

and sometimes, children walk among the headstones killing time.