God's Acre, Charlotte & me.

When I was 7, there was a place at the end of the street and over a fence at the very back of a neighbor's yard. It was a place that the kids on my side of the fence went to meet the kids on the other side of the fence to play. That place was declared a park in 1974, and we used it as one. We played kick-the-can, red-light/green-light and basically ran all over this pretty little green space. This space was a cemetery.

God's Acre Cemetery with few stones left after many had been re-located to another local cemetery, was the place where my fascination began. And at this young age I was already trying to piece together the lives and deaths of the people who were in this place - that lived so long ago. I tried to comprehend what that long ago was like. Who were these people? What did they wear? How did they live? Imagination is a magical thing when you are a child and I had plenty. I was also confused and intrigued by the language used on the stones and read and re-read them, trying to understand why it was so different...eventually learning what it meant.

I remember reading inscriptions with friends. I remember us bringing big silver spoons to dig. I remember shining a flashlight into a crevice of one opening because we were sure we would see a body. I remember so many more stones.

Much of what was left has been taken back by nature. New, uniform, faceless, bland markers have been put in place in some effort to retain the people buried there. As I walked around I wanted to start digging with my silver spoon because I KNOW there are more there! Then came Charlotte...a little piece of slippery stone under my foot. I got down and dug with my hands, pulling grass away and moving sticky New York mud. And there she was...hiding under the grass. I painstakingly cleaned the fallen face with a hunk of grass and a stick. A worm squiggled across the stone and I could not help singing "The worms go in, the worms go out..." in my head and smiling. Charlotte would not be lost just yet.