Dead And In The Ground

The company/ministry I work for produces video of several different kinds. One kind is short video illustrations usually meant for supporting sermons or leaders in teaching small (or large) groups. They are anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes long and support a subject or point in a dramatic or humorous manner.

I say that to give a little background to the beginning of this story. I had my son, Jack, out at a local cemetery for a video shoot for work. I am not a video producer, I am a web developer but I have several kids of various ages so they come to me occassionally and say they have the need for a specific aged child and ask if they can use one of mine. The kids love it because it makes them feel like a star for a bit and they get to take part in what dad does at work. Anyway, there we were in the cemetery while they had Jack dressed up in a suit from the 1940s staging dramtic slow motion shots for a flashback scene in a clip they were working on. While this was going on I got to looking at the tombstones around the area where I was standing. Obviously this cemetery had been there for a while as there were some old stones there. Some that were very worn and difficult to read. Some that were next to trees where the roots had caused the stone to go crocked.

There was one that was for a three year old child that had died way back in 1906. At the top of the stone it said, "Gone but not forgotten." As I looked at this particular stone and how worn it was and how it was leaning a little and the little marble decorative pieces on the ground in front were not straight as they had been intended to be over 100 years ago, I wondered if there was anyone around who still had interest in this particular grave. The parents would obviously be gone by now. Most likely, any siblings would also be gone. There were no flowers, or any sign of any flowers. I wondered if anyone had come to look at this stone within a decade or more. I looked around and saw many such stones. I was a little sad thinking about the abandoned dead. Then I thought that all that cemetary, headstone, engravings, flowers, american flags on the graves, stuffed animals, figurings and all such stuff is not really for the dead at all. It is for the living. The dead don't care about all that because, well, they are dead.

I am not sure what the point here is.. maybe we feel the need to hang on to something. The memories and pain fade and maybe that bothers us all. That seems wrong to us. So, we try to remember in the cemetary. I don't know... it just made me think a little.