Those Who Take Their Presence With Them, Those Who Leave It Behind

photo by Francesca Woodman

My friend and I were talking the other day about a girl we'd once known and loved. As a child, she'd seemed touched by magic, everyone around her felt touched by magic. I'd feel so bereft when she'd go away. Since we didn't see each other very often, it was my fate to be left behind.

The essence of this is distilled in dreams about her: we talk frenetically, tell half-understood stories, play confusing, yet fascinating games. The clock ticks in the background. There are months of things we want to tell, but there is never enough time. Her mother's voice calls from the distance, saying they have to go. Her real life is somewhere else, far away from mine. As always, I'm left with a vague notion of color and shadow, a memory where her presence once was. Nothing even as substantial as a ghost. Only an undefined longing fills the vacuum.

Childhood friendships can be mysterious, and I've long wondered about this ancient grief of mine. To this day, I'm not certain what I expected. I'm quite sure I was more attached to her than she ever was to me. Perhaps this was the source of the longing - underneath our apparent closeness in those days, I really knew who was loved the least. 

My friend considered this view, but ultimately disagreed.

He said, "It's just that she takes her presence with her when she goes. When she's gone, she's gone. Those kinds of people, there is an emptiness where they used to be.

'You, on the other hand, leave your presence behind."

It was immediately clear what he meant, though I'd never heard it put into words before. It was an intriguing idea. We thought through all the people we've known, whether their presence went with them or lingered. Despite the intangibility of a quality such as "presence", we were able to agree in every case as to who was which. We wondered at first if it was the type or strength of personality that made the difference, but no...there were similar types who fell into different categories, and exceedingly different ones who were the same. Nor did spirituality matter much - one very spiritual roommate left nary a trace of his living there, another had such a strong presence, even the years couldn't diminish it.

It's a nebulous, but distinctive phenomenon. Your beloved is not with you, you are totally alone.

Your beloved is not with you, yet some sense of  them remains. 

I wondered if missing someone more acutely contributed to the perception of absence. Again, my friend disagreed. To him, feeling the absent person's presence made missing them more difficult, a constant reminder that they really were gone. Plus, he pointed out, there are some people who drastically improve the mood in a room just by leaving it. Well, I certainly can't disagree with that.

To me, though, the absolute feeling of absence seems utterly lonely, haunted by longing. As if I might recapture something important if only I could find a trace of that person, somewhere, around some far corner. A sign or signal drifting on the breeze.

This last is how it seemed to me with the girl we'd once known and loved. Years later, when we were grown and living in the same town, I would catch hints of her presence. On the sidewalk, through a shop window, in the echoes of a stairway where she had just been and gone. Not much had changed, really...the ticking clock had been set in motion long ago. The mysteries of our friendship were never to be solved; ultimately, there is little point in loving someone who must always leave you. Instead, I learned to love the traces of her presence for the brief moments they remained, like little whirlwinds, so many vaporous wisps, so many childhood  ghosts. 

Eumorpha Vitis Vitis

A Vine Sphinx moth takes shelter beneath the light. 

A sign of things hidden, keeping secrets.. 

Rising Storm

It's bloody hard, being depressed. It's work. You push through each day, you slog, you muddle, you barely remember a thing, except that it was hard.

I feel like a drunk, promising to be sober tomorrow. Except it's happiness. Tomorrow, I promise, I'll be happy tomorrow. But it doesn't happen, and another tomorrow comes and goes, with no change.

Depression steals your life. It drains it away, You keep hoping for your life to start again, but you can't see how because of the fog in your head, the fatigue, the vague but unnerving certainty that something somewhere is terribly wrong.

Depression is like sodden gray clouds in the mind, broken wires, communication lines lost in the rising wind.
Storms, at least, will pass, but depression feels like an eternal forecast:
forever and ever, nothing but rain..

Shadows In The Sky

Shadows In the Dust

I remember reading, how a tracker can see shadows in  the dust.

If one knows how to look, there is information in everything..

August Moon

Late, on the night of the full moon.

August

Late Summer. The sound of the breeze in dry grass.

Juniper

Juniper berries in a Paleo-Indian bowl.

The Legend Of Creepy Hollow

The Salem Road Bridge

It was a long time ago now that I first encountered Creepy Hollow, though I didn't know what it was called then. My cousin and I were out for a drive that day. Nancy could drive for hours and she was always looking for a place to go. She'd overheard some of the profs at the university talking about Salem Road and how long it was. "Pack a lunch", they said. That's how we ended up heading out to the country one afternoon, singing along with The Beatles, laughing, smoking cigarettes, back when they were still cheap enough to smoke. It was sometime in the summer, 1995.

Salem road runs though town like any other street - straight and boring - then crosses the highway where it becomes a twisting country lane. Not too many people live on the other side of the highway. There were fields, the occasional farmhouse and some scrubby trees..At first, it seemed fine. There was nothing unusual about the place, and I'm sure I didn't notice anything awry until it was impossible not to notice. Nancy was unperturbed as well. Mostly our minds were occupied with romance and boys and whatever love triangle was happening that week. That's the way it often is when you are young. 

We didn't see the bridge until we were very close to it. A sudden dip in the road and there it was. Nancy slowed the car. Somehow, we hadn't been expecting this. The bridge was very narrow and she hesitated. Her hands were tense on the steering wheel. She said nothing, but I could tell she was thinking hard about whether to cross. I noticed this, despite the vague horror that was creeping through my bones. Knowledge was gathering into an absolute certainty that whatever was on the other side of this bridge was like death, or worse. Indescribably worse. I felt cold all over and wanted to scream at her not to cross, we had to get out of here now but I did not - there was no obvious reason, you know? It was just a low bridge on a country lane and there was nothing visible to be afraid of.  

Nancy drove slowly onto the bridge, then stopped the car. We seemed to stay there for hours though it would have been no time at all. "Hey" she said in a high, artificial voice, "you know what? I think we'd better turn around now."  I agreed, we backed up, turned around and drove back the way we came. Nancy's face was as white as a sheet. 

It's funny, when I remember this incident, I could swear it took place at twilight, with a chilly wind and a violet tinge in the air. That's not possible of course, it couldn't have been later than four in the afternoon. But the memory is so hazy now. That's another funny thing - despite being scared out of our wits, as soon as we got home we promptly forgot the incident. That sounds silly, like something out of a bad novel, but it's true. For years, it was never mentioned again.

underneath the bridge

It was not until 2002 that a talk with a neighbor jogged my memory. She mentioned that she and her brother liked to go fishing at the creek at Salem Road, they would fish from the bridge early in the morning. The bridge? A fuzzy memory took shape in my mind. She began to describe the location, but she'd hardly said a word before the memory hit me. That place! How could I forget it? But not quite forgotten, not really. As soon as I remembered, I realized I'd been dreaming about it for years, dark and eerie dreams about loss.

I mentioned this to my boyfriend at the time. Oh, yes, he said, that bridge! It had taken 5 tries before he managed to cross it, he lost his nerve every time. It's hard to explain, he said,.there's just something wrong with that place.

It was after that that I began to ask questions of the people I knew. What was the strangest thing that ever happened to them? Was there anything about the town that made them uneasy? Had they ever been really scared? While the answers were always interesting, the name "Creepy Hollow" turned up unusually often. It didn't take long to figure out that this was the local name for the Salem Road bridge. The stories were all over the place, but very strange indeed. There were tales of witches and devil-worshipers. Ghosts. Black magic. The fishing neighbor wasn't bothered, but her girlfriend wouldn't go near the place. My friend Lawrence had seen piles of bones on the bridge. Heather had heard tales of a hundred black cats materializing out of thin air. Angela's story was most impressive - she'd been invited to a Halloween party at the far end of Salem Road, but after seeing flickering candle flames and hearing voices in the woods, she turned tail and fled. There was no way she would cross the bridge on Halloween night.

Always present in the stories was a common theme, that they simply could not cross the bridge at first. The fear wouldn't allow it. Tallying up all the stories I'd heard, from more than 20 people, the average number of tries was 5.  If you look carefully at the top photo, you'll see that the grass is worn through on the right side by cars turning around to leave.

I made it in four, though it was Angela who drove me across. She was veteran of the bridge by then. She still wouldn't go near it on Halloween night, though.

The other side

Eventually, I knew that the only way to find out what was happening at Creepy Hollow was to have a look at it myself. Already I'd met several self-proclaimed Satanists who said they had gone down there to perform rituals because the place was a "vortex of negative energy", Well, hearsay was all very nice but after so many tales, it was simply not enough. I went down on a very bright day in the summer of 2005, when these pictures were taken. I'd been across the bridge enough times by then to be prepared. I walked up, looked around briefly then crawled underneath. I saw a snake, but no signs of witchcraft or devil worship, nor anything else that oughtn't be under a bridge. On top of the structure thought, things were a little different. 

About halfway across, I noticed what appeared to be a skein of sheep's wool wrapped around the railing, splotched with red. There was a bloody rag, and a trail of bloodstains on the concrete. There were three cigarette butts lying near the biggest stains, as if someone had leaned against the railing, casually smoking while they bled profusely onto the ground. It was...odd. I didn't take a picture of this, for a now out-dated reason. These photos were taken with an analogue camera, with film that was sent to be processed. I didn't want the person who developed the photos to think I was psycho.

I crossed the bridge, went to the other side and stood there, trying to get a grasp on what it was about this place. After coming here a few times, the fear was no longer intense, but...the place felt dead. Lifeless. No birdsong, no insect buzz, the clouds didn't move in the sky. There was no happiness or sadness, just...nothing. Later, I drove a friend, a practicing witch, out to the place to see what she thought. She also noticed the lack of birdsong, and the second hand on her watch failed to work on the other side of the bridge. She said it felt like time had stopped. I had to agree. After the fear subsided, it felt like time had gone dead.

It wasn't until a couple of years after that that I saw Nancy again. I asked her if she remembered our drive on Salem Road. "oh, gods," she said with widening eyes, "That evil place, I was so scared. Why did you have to remind me?" But she was relieved to know that we hadn't been the only ones. 

...

Searching the internet one day, I came across this short piece of video, made at the same bridge:

It tantalizingly promises "more to come" but of course, it never came. It's the way of things here, I suppose. Even paranormal investigators get stymied, get bored. Despite the rumors of tragic accidents and suicides and other horrible happenings at the bridge, not a one can be proven. There is no dramatic solution. At the end of the day, all that can be said is that a lot of people have been afraid of this place.

Mystery In The Grove - updated

Not long ago, we spent an afternoon at a nearby park. The area was a farmer's pecan grove once, but is  now public land. It's a peaceful friendly-feeling place, green and leafy with walking paths winding through. There are a few benches where a person can rest, listen to the wind rustling in the leaves and forget  about the outside world for a moment.

It's also a fun place for children to play tag or hide and seek, investigate tree hollows and chase the occasional squirrel.

There's nothing gloomy or melancholy about the place at all, or so it would seem. There's a freshness to the air in a pecan grove that makes even a depressive like me feel better. So I was merely being curious, not melancholy, when I noticed that part of the Southwest edge of the park seemed a little darker than the rest.

I walked the fence line with my camera, wondering why the park felt so different here. Perhaps it was just that the undergrowth on the other side made it more humid and consequently more oppressive. Nothing unusual about that. Then, suddenly, the feeling was far more than oppressive. It was outright grim.

 As I stood in the spot pictured above, a despair came over me. It chilled me to the bones, too, because it wasn't a general feeling of despair, but very specific to my memory. It felt as if I were back in time, during what was perhaps the worst depressive episode of my life. The kind of despair that does not come in a lifeless gray haze but in the searing colors of a nightmare.

I'd lived in dread of ever feeling that way again, and here it was. But it was alien. It didn't seem to belong to me this time - it seemed to be in the location itself. This is why I snapped the photo, not so much an attempt to capture a feeling-state on camera but as a way to mark the place.

The one unusual thing I noticed at the time was the tree above me - the one closest in the photo - is one of the very few on the property that is not a pecan tree, but a hackberry instead. I'm no fan of hackberries, they are a nuisance, but that's not much reason for the sheer negative energy I felt in that place.

Experimentally, I decided to move on, wondering if the sensations would fade or intensify as I continued down the fence line. The underbrush and overhanging trees were thicker down the way, so it seemed if it was darkness and humidity (or just simple creepiness) affecting me, the feeling would have become stronger as I went along.

It didn't. The photo above was also taken to mark the place. It's far darker and more overgrown (and a tad creepy too) but this spot felt much more pleasant than the area of the hackberry tree, and there was no feeling of despair here, nor was there the further away I walked.      

I slowly made my way back toward the hackberry tree, paying close attention to the landscape, amount of light, scent or anything that might be be affecting my mood. Still, nothing seemed awry until I came near the vicinity of the hackberry again. When the despair began to creep up on me, I noted a fallen tree on the other side of the fence.

Well, that was an unhappy sight. Death and decay. It looks forlorn even if there is more light. Maybe that's what was triggering my ill feelings. I moved away, slightly to the left, and the despair hit me full force.  I was under the hackberry tree again.

I looked close and studied it for a while. I didn't like the tree overmuch, but there was nothing very unusual about it.as trees go. One fairly thick branch jutted out toward the park, and I followed it with my eyes. I followed it upwards, directly over my head, That's when I saw something unexpected.

There was something hanging from the branch. I used a stick to reach it and pull it close enough to see. I didn't want to remove it from the branch, even if I could. The object gave me a strong feeling of repulsion, I didn't want to risk touching it at all. It was a navy blue elastic cord,  knotted, like the kind of cheap necklaces that local teenagers wear. There was some sort of object strung on it as well, but it was broken, too difficult to tell what it ever was. The elastic cord was tied to a long piece of wire, quite strong, looped around the tree branch right over head. 

I tried to photograph it as clearly as possible, but it was high up and hard to see in any case. The cord is visible close up, though the wire is nearly impossible to make out.     

A cord, perhaps a necklace, tied to a wire in a tree branch. What did it mean? Maybe nothing, maybe someone disposing of an object in an offbeat way or idling by tying knots in things.  Maybe the wire was left by some city workers for some project. Maybe it had some kind of practical reason for being there. I looked around for other wires, other blue cords, but there was nothing.

It might have seemed a strange thing to find, even without the overwhelming feeling of despair in that place. Given this, though, and where it was, and the length and how high, it immediately struck me that the wire was meant to be a makeshift noose. Maybe someone had stood there once, exactly there, leaching despair into the landscape where it still remains. Maybe the necklace was what they sacrificed instead.

I don't know. I probably never will.

Update, June 7 -

Last week I went back to the park, wondering again about the object in the tree. Maybe I could get a better look this time.The park was just the same as always, light and breezy. I walked toward the hackberry tree, waiting for the onset of despair that I'd felt before. Instead, I felt nothing. I walked along the fence line, just to be sure. No, there was no difference anywhere. The feeling of despair was gone. Back at the hackberry, I went to look for the object, the wire and necklace, or whatever it was. It was nowhere to be found.

I searched the tree as much as possible, I searched the ground, even where wind or flood waters might have pushed it. There was nothing at all. Not even a bad vibe left reverberating in the air.

It's for the best, I think.

A Dark Road

It's been a year since I came back to my hometown. It's been a hard road. Desolate.There are few ghosts here, on the rim of the desert. Mostly they are ghosts of the mind. 

In a strictly practical way, things are better here than the dead end of the gulf coast.You can see it in the people, with their yoga bodies and shiny hair, no look of desperation to distort their features. No one is selling crack in the 'hood - there is no 'hood, and no need to worry about your children's education. It's all so very positive, so...upwardly mobile. The dark side of this coin is that failure is spurned equally as hard. 

On the gulf coast, failure - if not a way of life -  is something one co-exists with, a condition you are simply too hot and too tired to rise above. Oh, maybe not in the cities so much, but in these little port towns where even the most successful are at the last bus stop on their career path - it only takes one blow to send people toppling like a row of dominoes. And the air is so heavy, it's hard to get up again. 

So, in a very practical sense, it's better. But who wants to go back to a place that has cruelty in its bones? I spent the worst years of my life in this place and frankly, it hasn't changed. Old traumas lurk at every corner. Memories break through the surface like tree roots through concrete. I'd never had the faintest desire to come home, for good reasons. I can't wait for the day I'll be able to leave it again. 

One evening this past Winter, I walked to the end of the road and looked down the hill. Everything was dark but for pools of light beneath distant streetlamps. Music drifted in from the dance hall above the town, an exacting cover of  Mary Jane's Last Dance. I studied the pools of light. Somehow, the sight of them made me feel less lonely.

Fire and Hemlock

No, no hemlock involved, really. Only the burning of an ancient tree in the garden.

Lone Oak Cemetery, Part 4

We reached the cemetery about 45 minutes before dusk, to have a little time to take stock of our  surroundings. Was the place still as creepy? Yes, though not as creepy as it would become as night fell.

We wandered around taking photos and video, looking for details we might have missed. It was a pleasant enough night, if a bit cloudy. Everything was as usual. As the sun went down the wind began to kick up. The photos I'd taken so far looked ordinary enough when seen through the viewer, and then suddenly they were not. 

                                        

View of the west corner of the cemetery at twilight: 

Pollen? Dust? Insects? The dreaded, ubiquitous orbs? If you look closely, you can see there is one light for every tombstone in that corner, including a small one near the eeriest grave, the one where some have imagined hearing voices.

                                                                I immediately turned to the right and saw this in my viewfinder.

I moved on toward the southern part of the graveyard to a place where I felt a strangeness, an eddying wind and rustling leaves that sounded almost like voices. I came to the unusual resting place of Lily Linke, buried just outside the family plot, forever separate. It was here that I began to feel a distinct presence.

I felt the presence follow me onto the path, where I began to feel very uneasy. I told it to go in peace and it gradually drifted away.

It was beginning to feel too spooky, though I was prepared for that. I was determined I wouldn't be scared into running this time. But still, the feeling of being watched was unnerving.. It was time to leave.

In the distance beyond the path, I thought I'd photographed a light from a radio tower or a passing plane. But  I was wrong. There was no tower nor was there a plane that time of night. That tiny light in the distance hadn't been there at all.

I've been waiting for my brother to watch the videotape he recorded that night, but for some reason he seems reluctant to do so....

Lone Oak Cemetery, Part 3

It was nearly 17 years ago that my brother told me of something strange at Lone Oak. He had been visiting our aunt's grave late one afternoon, when his attention was caught by a headstone with a woman's photograph. The year of her death was 1919. He was completely alone in the cemetery, so I suppose he was unconcerned about being overheard when he spoke aloud: "Huh. I wonder if she died in the flu epidemic."

According to him, he immediately heard a buzzing in the air. It sounded like a lot of people whispering at once..Out of these sounds, he said, a distinct voice said "yes". It came from the left, from the grave of the woman's daughter. The whispering died away, and he was suddenly aware that the sun was very low in the sky and the wind was picking up. To hear him tell it, he couldn't get out of there fast enough.

It certainly sounded creepy. "Well, if you go out there, just don't go at sunset" he said.

It really was happenstance that the sun was beginning to set when my cousin and I wound our way to the cemetery gates later that year. It had been a long trip, we had spent hours at the library doing research and come all this way. It was less than fortunate timing, but we weren't going to not stop just because of that. Besides, we had  fresh cut roses to bring to our aunt, it would be a shame to waste them.

It was June, the grain was high in the fields. It felt so isolated, with only a few houses and a church across the road. The sun was on the horizon, but never mind, there was plenty of light left to do what we came to do. We laid the flowers for our aunt and decided to search out the grave where my brother heard the voice. It wasn't far - the grave of  a woman named Elsa, next to her daughter, Alma. Alma's photo plaque was sadly broken, but Elsa looked to be a sensible lady, not so scary. We heard no voices, but perhaps it  was at that point I began to feel a little strange.

I said nothing to my cousin, but  kept seeing movement out of the corner of my eye. There was nothing there of course, but even seeing nothing I could swear there was something.. I turned it over in my mind - the movements of trees, shadows? Perhaps those little flags placed on veteran's graves being whipped about in the wind. Nerves. Then again, this cemetery was peaceful. It didn't feel threatening. But why did I keep mistaking the shape of the headstones for people? Why did I feel so sure we were being watched?

We continued walking, my cousin reading out the women's names on the headstones: Mitta, Lille, Alamina.... "such pretty, old-fashioned names"  she said. It was dark enough that we noticed that the cross on the church opposite was lighted. We were nervous enough to feel comforted by it. The wind was really picking up.

              The lighted cross on the church opposite, July, 2012

We were walking toward the west corner - drawn by its relative isolation - when a car sped down  the narrow road through the cornfields. A young man out for a joyride perhaps. The car disappeared into the distance. We kept walking, but my cousin had become remarkably quiet. I wasn't feeling so chatty either. I wasn't scared exactly, but something was becoming very wrong. A strange thought came to me: "That was the first alarm."

 The sky was still streaked with pink but the sun had set.. The sound of the wind in the fields was not comforting. I hadn't realized the way wind can blow across flat land, that constant hollow rushing. It went on and on.

The man in the car sped past again. We saw him through the gates. That was the second alarm, I thought. My cousin kept looking  toward the lighted cross. I was beginning to feel real fear now, the kind that was like an outside pressure forcing my body to move. Five minutes later, the man in the car sped by again, and my cousin who looked  very white in the face, said. "I think we'd better go now." As we started to move toward the gate, the fear came upon us so strong that we began to run. It was a blind panic, terror. It seemed more than the fear that some guy might harass us on a country road at twilight, though that was bad enough. It seemed like something else. It was as if something had begun to yell at us to run.

We didn't speak for a while. When we did, we tried to think what happened. Well, that man in the car was unsettling, no? It could have been him who caused us to panic. But maybe not. There was something else there. We could feel it. That lighted cross on the church seemed almost as if it had a specific purpose, facing the graveyard that way. The next time we went, we made sure we brought a male friend, so we wouldn't have to worry about strange men on country roads. We went even later, at night. We wanted to know what it was that frightened us- maybe it was just that man, after all. Our friend was very jovial, out for a lark. I can't even say what happened - only that one moment we were walking down the lane in the pitch darkness, Jeff chuckling that we'd need a guardian for this - and the next we were all scrambling into the car, scared out of our minds. Even Jeff  was so frightened he couldn't open the simple latch on the gate - we jumped it instead.

A year later, I gave it another try, with another companion this time. I had brought him to show him this place where my some of my family had settled. Once again, we didn't mean to come at sunset, it was bad timing. Again, I felt safe enough not to forgo the visit. Probably I had exaggerated the fear in my mind. We walked about as the sun was setting. It was he who first pointed out the cradle boards around the grave in the west corner - I hadn't yet had the nerve to make it back there on my own. We crisscrossed the grounds, splitting up to examine things on our own. The sun had dropped below the horizon and the wind had begun to pick up the way it always seemed to do as night was falling. Again, I was amazed at how far sound carried there. There was no one to be seen for miles, but I could hear the sound of people working, building something perhaps, shouting to each other and banging away on something metal. .The sounds made it feel less lonely. It was getting quite dark and the wind was howling by then. I was back in the west corner, taking a closer look at those odd, out of place burial sites. They really were intriguing. The fear I'd felt must have been my imagination, it wasn't bad here at all....

I hear a faint sound - my companion is shouting my name into the wind. He's coming across the grounds, very fast, and says come on, we have to go, we have to go. I ask him what's up and he only  takes my arm and says "we have to go right now."  He's taking me back to the car - is prepared to carry me bodily if he has to, he says - when the fear hits me full on. My knees are so weak that I can barely get myself into the passengers seat. We go as fast as possible away from there. Finally my companion says "everything was fine one minute, the next there was a voice in my ear saying "get her out of here, now, run, RUN!'" It wasn't the sort of voice you could argue with.

On the long drive home, I said, "it surprises me the way sound carries - those people working must have been miles away". He looked puzzled. I said, "all those people shouting and banging; it was pretty loud. didn't you hear it?' He says, appalled, "honey, there wasn't any sound out there but the wind"

It would be a long time before any of us went back, but finally, we did. At twilight again, but this time on purpose.

.

Lone Oak Cemetery, part 2

The historical marker at Lone Oak Cemetery reads like this:

"On January 17 1897, German immigrants in the Geronimo area met at Specht school to discuss the need for a community cemetery. The group formed a "Friedhof Gestellschaft" or cemetery association and within a week purchased a five-acre plot of land from Ernst Puls and designated it the Lone Oak Cemetery.The following year, the first burial, that of the one week-old unnamed son of Ernst and Bertha Puls, took place. Since its founding, over 900 burials have taken place and several older 19th century graves have been relocated here as well."

It's a chilling irony  - Did the farmer who sold his land ever imagine the first burial would be his own child?

Perhaps, or perhaps not. Certainly there is evidence of the harshness of country life back then in the number of children's graves at Lone Oak. It's painful to contemplate the rows of headstones in the family plots where a child was lost every year. Even with the inscription wearing off the oldest  stones, there are many carved  with small lambs, slowly succumbing to the weather.

Most of the children's headstones are simple, though one stands out as more elaborate. The grave of a small boy (four or five years old, the inscription was too worn to be sure)  has a marble statue - perhaps a young Jesus or other saint - with a lamb at his side. The pedestal reads "watch until I come". A lot of care and expense must have been put into it. I wondered if his parents had been especially distraught over his loss; or perhaps it was that they had the financial means to express it when others had not. At the foot of the grave, a stone reads "baby love",  a sentiment that seems very unusual to find in a German-American cemetery at that time.and place. I think the answer is probably both - the heartbreak is almost palpable in the stone itself:

Even if the means to decorate the grave of a lost child might have been scarce, the effort was made nonetheless. This infant girl's grave, surrounded by her cradle, overwhelms me every time I see it.

There is another reason it troubles me though. It's not only the feeling of the loss or the sense of passing time. This grave is in the west corner, isolated, no one with her last name nearby. There are only a few graves in the west corner and none seem to be related. It's not likely that these were the graves of paupers - they all have markers - and they are not the oldest graves in the cemetery. They just seem... odd, out of place, distressing somehow.

The west corner is intriguing, if a bit unsettling, and it's possible to get lost in thought there before you realize the sun is sinking and dusk is coming way too fast.

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....

Left-Hand Angel

Left-hand angel