“You live as long as you are remembered.”
— Russian proverb
With the sun shining and the leaves putting on a beautiful autumn show, my sister and I took a walk to explore a very old cemetery.
It is tucked away on a quiet, country road not far from my house, and we had never walked through it. There is no driveway to enter it, so it sits in barren solitude.
Exploring just for the sake of attempting to read ancient soapstone monuments from our home community holds not even a hint of sadness. I have long recognized this may seem like an odd interest to some, even macabre to many. But it is this sister who joined with me in fighting back when vandals desecrated what is said to be the oldest cemetery in our region, the Eckley Cemetery, back around 1990.
That sacred ground, where a Revolutionary War veteran is laid to rest, is very near my sister’s home and surrounded by farm fields that we once explored as part of our home turf. Members of the Smalley family, whom I have written of in many columns, and once lived where my sister and brother-in-law raised their family, are laid to rest there.
My children were still quite little when Dad called me one morning and said, “I’m driving over to get you and the kids … the Eckley Cemetery was desecrated last night.”
The long lane was as that time shaded, and it felt as though those entering had left the world behind to enter someplace quaint, untouched by a world that had long ago marched on. That morning, as we parked in the shaded entry of that glorious, otherworldly setting, it was shocking to take in the sight.
Lovely, fragile, monuments that we had long admired had been snapped off and thrown, used as daggers to destroy others. The vandals came armed with a four-wheeler, baseball bats and bad intent. The desecration was horrific.
That day we started a campaign to find those accountable. People contributed to a reward fund I set up. It immediately reached and exceeded $2,000. That got someone to talk, and three young people, one a juvenile, were arrested.
I took my young children along to Common Pleas Court the day two were sentenced, wanting them to see criminals brought in, handcuffed, to face their punishment and public humiliation. The eloquent judge said he had never heard from so many incensed community members, asking him to show no mercy. He did not. As part of their sentence, he demanded they be put to work hand-digging graves during their time of incarceration.
The man who earned the reward money asked that it be put back into repairing the cemetery. A large monument was placed at the entrance area of the cemetery which listed the names of those laid to rest there so long ago, their monuments damaged by young criminals.
I have long known there is an entirely different emotion tied to ancient burial grounds. There is respect without sorrow. Leave this section and step toward a grave of someone personally known and missed in this life, and the pang of loss, an empty bruise of heartache, is felt. “You live as long as you are remembered” is a proverb that rings true. I carry it in my heart, beckoning back so many good souls who made me who I am.
