Thoughts While Standing At My Father's Grave

My father died last year at the age of 93.  In four more days he would have been 94.  I wasn’t able to be at his funeral because of a snowstorm.  He is buried in a cemetery a thousand miles from where I live.  This past Sunday I visited his grave.  My father and mother are buried on a lot that adjoins the graves of my paternal great-grandfather and great-grandmother, my paternal grandfather and grandmother, and my aunt and uncle.  Nearby is the grave of a great-uncle. 

Why do we have graves in cemeteries with headstones and markers?  We make every possible effort to return the bodies of servicemen and servicewomen from foreign countries where they died so that they are buried in their home town or one of the national veterans’ cemeteries.  Their grave is marked with their name, date of birth and date of death.  For the Christian the body is placed in the earth to await the second coming of Christ.  “The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised incorruptible.”  At the very least the grave and its marker are a long-lasting declaration “This person lived upon the earth during these years; he/she is not forgotten.”

The Russians have a saying they use about someone who is not a likeable person, “Who will tend to his grave?”  I noticed that the graves of my uncle and aunt were decorated with flowers, an American flag and a tiny lantern that holds a candle.  They have two sons in town.  In another part of the cemetery the headstones of my maternal grandmother and maternal great-grandfather were knocked over as were a number of grave stones surrounding them.  They were either the objects of vandalism or maybe a tree had fallen in that area.  All of the graves are old.  My grandmother died almost fifty years ago and my great-grandfather before then.  I doubt if anyone in that town remembers either one of them.  Their headstones have become a moot point.

I am told that in Spain the cemeteries are so crowded that grave lots are leased for a year.  After a year the body is dug up and cremated.  It is nice that great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents can lie together resting in peace in adjoining grave lots.  That belongs to the past.  In our modern culture parents and children are often separated by hundreds or thousands of miles.  They will die, be buried, and their graves marked with the names, date of birth, and date of death.  No one in the nearby communities will care that they lived upon the earth during those years.  Will their children drive hundreds or thousands of miles to stand over their grave?