"The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead."

-W.H. Auden

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Lone Oak Cemetery, Part 1

Coming further north to the place where I grew up, we took the opportunity to visit the small cemetery where a number of my relatives are buried. It's a quiet place on a lonely road, surrounded by acres of corn and sorghum fields.

As cemeteries go, it's a pleasant one. It's old fashioned, fairly plain, with a  few decorative cedars and one large oak tree that gives the cemetery its name. Many of the headstones are inscribed in German, the oldest  beginning to sink into the earth. Usually, the only sound you hear is the wind.

If one has to be buried, then I suppose it's not such a bad place to take your eternal rest.




Quite a few of the headstones even have photographs, which is nice, I think. It  gives one insight into the lives of  those interred there.





                                                 

 So yes, it's a pleasant place, very peaceful. Not imposing or intimidating, not even scary for a place that makes you contemplate mortality. In the daytime, at least..The problem with Lone Oak cemetery is what seems to happen at twilight, when everyone I've known to go there has had to leave at a terrified run....

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