Thursday, February 9, 2012

Cemetery Tales: A Broken Man

One evening after work I decided to go photograph one of the smaller outlying cemeteries. I wasn't positive where it was, but trusted my GPS to get me there. When I arrived I was a little nervous to discover that it was at the edge of civilization. Miles of sand dunes on one side, a sagebrush dessert on another. I pulled in and got out of my car.

As I was halfway through the first section I noticed an old beat up car pull in. The car slowly drove around the entire cemetery before moving over to the section where I was working. It stopped right next to me. A man of about 30 got out of the car. He had an open beer can in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. He was dirty, unshaven, and was wearing tattered clothes. And he just stood there watching me.

I was acutely aware of how vulnerable I was. I was in an isolated place, no one knew where I was, and I was a bit scared. I tried not to show my nervousness and kept moving from headstone to headstone, pausing to take the photo. I said hi to him and he mumbled a hi. Then he said, "are you getting ideas?" I told him then what I was doing. I said, "is your family buried here?" and he said yes. I told him his family would be able to go to billiongraves.com and look up pictures and information about his family that was buried there. He said that was cool and then I moved off down the row, snapping photos.

When I got a ways away I glanced back to where I'd spoken with him, and was shocked to see that he was down on the ground. He was crying and obviously in great emotional pain. I discreetly moved off to a farther section of the cemetery to give him privacy. After about 20 minutes I saw his car drive out.

I was curious. I went back to the spot where we'd spoken and looked again at the headstone. There was a photo on this one. A photo of a very lovely little family. All shiny and clean and happy; man, wife and child. The wife was the one buried there. The man in the photo spoke volumes of how far down the slippery slope of grief that poor broken man had come.

4 comments:

Paulette Harper-Krull said...

Hi Linda, long time no speak! Me I mean. I know you'll understand when I say I've been stuck like the proverbial "Chuck" for several months now.

I'm so glad to see you, however,have come unstuck--you have so much insight and wisdom to share as you actively live your life. It's a cyclic thing, this process of human growth.

One of the things I've been ruminating on is the gift of being broken.

Last summer I found myself on the precipice of a grief so vast as to seem limitless. I was sitting on the porch, here in the middle of nowhere, alone; my soul flayed wide open, totally immersed in my grief, when it hit me.

God could not heal me until the depth of my wounding was such that all the layers of scar tissue that had formed over my soul were burned out, leaving nothing but fertile ground for His will to grow in my life. If I had not been as catastrophically wounded, I would not have been so miraculously healed. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it!

I don't believe in chance encounters. I believe that it Him who hung the stars sent you to that graveyard and to that man still drowning in his grief so that he could break and God could heal him.

OBTW, my daughter Sandra and I enjoy old graveyards. They have a lot here going back to the early 1800's and one of the first things that struck me was the number of babies--both named, and unnamed, that are buried in them.

Sometimes we forget today that countless ancestors lived and struggled and died for tens of thousands of years so that we could be, each life as real and as complicated as our own. I feel humbled by their sacrifices and walk on more determined to honor them through my life.

Once again Linda, I'm so glad to seeing you blogging again.

Bribear said...

I like this story :)

mitchowl said...

Thanks Paula, it's so good to reconnect with old friends. I appreciate your insights always.

And thank you, too, Bribear. Always glad to meet new friends.

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