It’s been an odd couple days. Back home, a man has passed away after a battle with cancer that lasted years. He was much beloved by all the congregation; I have heard no ill words spoken of him since I joined, and many bright. We never met, and yet the world is darker for his loss - the way every single person would brighten when talking of him, just that. But even in grief, the folks I am in contact with back home say rather, that Heaven rejoices in his life. I would have mourned with them; instead I am here, with my family, so removed from grief and mourning that I have reminded myself of the fact. It’s a strange dissonance.

Monday I went to a cemetery to write. It was a small, grassy plot, encroached a few yards in the back and corners by the surrounding woods and overhanging grapevines. There were no stones apparent - a little ways in, I found a marble plaque set into the ground. At the back, obscured by the trees, was a tall cross, in pink rough granite. There was a small shed, open and empty; all else was untouched. It was one of the most unsettling places I have ever been.

The only information I could find on it explained that it was where the almshouse buried their dead, many years ago. The almshouse is no longer standing. The graves were never marked.

I am glad that at Grace, they celebrate the life of the loved one who has passed beyond this world, and rejoice for the peace he will find at the end of his journey, even as they grieve and mourn his loss. I am glad that such a man, who gladdened every person who knew him, who was so deeply loved, will be remembered so well.

And... yet, I wonder how many lives were grieved, under that unmarked ground, and how many loved, and how many celebrated and mourned. It’s a strange and scary thought, that there were an untold number of people whose ends went so unremarked, because of their places as the castoffs of society.

But then I think about the folks mourning at Grace today, and tomorrow, and I believe - I know - that if the poorhouse was still part of that town, if there were people living and dying there, they would reach out to whatever lives they could, to rejoice with the light of life, and they would mourn when those lights passed.

Structures fall, and graveyards are swallowed by trees and vines, and streets crack and fade, and hospitals and almshouses close or burn or are torn down. But people are still people, and I think that with or without grave markers, every life in that grassy plot was celebrated and mourned here, as well as above.