A question was asked at a Death Cafe I participated in earlier this week about whether or not it mattered where you were buried. Should you be buried somewhere you had a plot? Should you be buried near family? Or did it really matter? If you would have asked me a few years ago, I would have said it didn’t really matter where you were buried as there was a good chance that after a generation or so your family wouldn’t come visit because they would have all scattered.
That opinion changed after I went searching for my grandmother’s grave in Poplar Bluff, MO. I planned a work trip so that I could drive home through Poplar Bluff, the town my daddy grew up in. I made my way to the cemetery and as I’d never visited my grandmother’s grave, I had to stop by the office to ask someone to show me the way. A very kind gentleman led me to my grandmother’s grave and took a moment to sweep the dust off before beckoning me over. As we stood there in awkward silence, he asked if she was buried “by her people” and the question took me aback. I knew that her husband, who had died 60 years, before was buried in Alton with my father, but I didn’t know if she was buried by any of her relatives.
I took a moment to look at the graves around her and noticed that Juanita Digges Collins was buried nearby and recognized the name. Juanita was my aunt who had died six years before I was born at the age of 26. I realized that since she was buried with her people, my grandmother was by extension buried with her extended family and not just surrounded by strangers. Although my logical brain told me that this really didn’t matter as they were dead, it touched my soul and made me smile a bit thinking of my grandmother in heaven surrounded by her people.
As I drove north the next day, I decided to stop by the Alton cemetery, where my father and grandfather were buried. I remembered a similar trip to visit my grandfather I’d made years earlier when I was working at nearby Scott Air Force Base. I’d sat on the grave of the grandfather I had never met and told him about my life. I shared my hopes, my dreams, and my sorrows with him. I remember feeling better when I left as if I had been listened to and heard.
I couldn’t find my father’s or grandfather’s grave this trip, but I know I was close as they were buried near Robert Wadlow, who at just about 8 feet tall is the world’s tallest man. I sat on the bumper of my car in the rain and talked and cried and it felt nice to be with “my people” and to tell them my hopes and dreams. Rationally, I know that I was standing in a cemetery talking to myself, but my heart felt a little lighter and that it was kind of nice to know my daddy was buried with his father and that I could go visit my people when I felt the need to.