Precious

Music: The Beatles Dear Prudence

It was in a cemetery

 

It was in a cemetery where I met her.  Strange place for a meeting, I know.  The cemetery… well it was one of those old city cemeteries that although begun on the outskirts, the growing town enveloped it.  It sat now more as a silent soothsayer forever crying out to the passerby’s “Remember thou art mortal” if they would only stop and look.  But that doesn’t happen much.  It s soft words were swallowed by the droning hustle and busy traffic of the city that was much too busy. 

The grounds reflected its stasis of aging semi-neglect.  Some of the markers were tilted.  Some chipped.  Some of the graves however, were decorated and colored by flowers made out of the freshest plastic.  In a way it resembled an old folks home for all too many in our society.  Every holiday at least one family member might come, maybe, and stay just long enough to make sure Pops was doing alright.  Then with a quick hustle back to the station wagon the life of the visitor could begin again… until they again drew the short straw for the next holiday.  So it goes.       

What was I doing there then?   I was looking for places to shoot in an upcoming documentary.  The grounds were beautiful.  The grass was green, and the rolling hills made for some dramatic landscapes.  The historian in me knew that each marker was a statement.  A person—a life lived.  But what could be gained from them.  The simplest evidence the gravestones displayed was dates.  Almost all of the stones carried markings of dates of birth and death.  The earliest death date I saw was 1836.  Now some of the markers had other markings on them.   If the surviving family members had the money, the tombstone might include an epithet that summed up the importance of the person to the survivors.  Many of these messages were titles: “Beloved daughter, Master carpenter” and so on.  Indeed it was in my glancing at the dates that I came across her.

I didn’t even see her at first, she was hidden.  It was her parents, Edith and Asa Howell, that first caught my eye.  Just by looking at the gravestones, I gathered information.  From the dates, Edith was three years older than her husband Asa.  She also lived eleven years longer than he did.  Laughing to myself I was prepared to move on.  I was a busy guy, I had things to do, I had to explore, I had to… and that is when she caught my eye.  As her diminutive marker was only twelve inches high, she was easily dwarfed by the titanic markers astride her.  Yet in looking at the stone, I could almost hear her tiny cry.  She was Prudence Howell.  She was born in 1893.  She died in 1893.  Her parents would have been in their late twenties when they had her.  In bold black, simple etchings marked her life: 7 months, 11 days. 

Though she had only walked on the earth for such a brief time, Prudence so greatly touched the lives of her parents.  A tender child she must have been: a vision of hope symbolizing the love that became life.    From the surrounding graves, I have no evidence that they had other children.  Indeed, as if to recognize the impact that this tiny child had on their lives,   Asa and Edith took the time, the expense, and the heartbreak, to have engraved on the stone: Precious.

For a moment the sound of the surrounding city was silent.  Time stopped.  I could feel the vibrancy of this light that had been extinguished all too quickly continue to call.  This diminutive voice from the turn of centuries prior took grief and turned it into exaltation for life.  Go and gather ye rosebuds folks... Life is simply too precious.