Reflect on the past, even before Memorial Day

The 15-inch cement circle rests in a country cemetery amid blooming wild strawberries. It was probably inscribed by with a nail and is decorated with pearly buttons.

“If tears could build a stairwell and Memories a lane,

I’d walk right up to Heaven and bring you Home again.”

That’s it. No name. No date. Who lies here? Someone’s parent or child? A spouse? All of the above?

Country cemeteries are quiet places where barbed wire, now rusted, is attached to ancient fence posts, erected to keep deer away from funeral flowers. The posts of old-growth cedar, tight-grained and stout as the hull of Noah’s ark, are hollow now, holding emerald mounds of fruiting mosses. Ragged 48-star flags wave gallantly from them.

There is no gate. It collapsed some time around Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941 for your youngsters), and no one got around to fixing it.

It’s hard to avoid walking on the succulent ground cover. One picks a tiptoe path through vacancies made of fallen cedar fronds. The air is fragrantly moist.

One such place is reached up an unassuming, unmarked set of ruts cut into a steep forested hillside. There are no tire tracks and it’s respectful to leave no footprints.

This burial mound once must have had a spectacular view to the coast. Today, the cathedral walls of guardian trees have clustered protectively around the mottled granite tombstones.

A stranger, approaching with curiosity and respect, feels a privileged visitor at a private place. This and other pioneer cemeteries are as hallowed as Stonehenge.

The tombstones have softened, there are no crisp edges. Lichen embroiders art nouveau designs and brilliant green mosses fill in the carved dates, defining lives.

“Gone but not forgotten

Although we are apart

Your Spirit lives with me

Forever in my heart.

Millie Springs 1823-1861”

“Infant

April 5, 1869

April 7, 1869”

“In loving memory of my father Aaron Wells 1835-1879 He married Mary C. Jefferson 1864 Father of Wm. C. Abigail & Lafe

He was a Civil War veteran Co. D 8th Vol. Inf A.M.Z.”

“Bill you gave us such beautiful memories.”

Suddenly, the visitor wishes she’d known Bill. Did he laugh a lot? Work hard? Love his kids and horses? Was he a musician or a wood carver? Was it a woman left with those memories? Is she with him now?

Questions come.

Why did so many women die in their 20s? Childbirth? Accident? Fever?

Are the tiny stones and dissolving cedar markers for babies? Who was she, besides “Mother”?

Beneath what single word would I choose to return my minerals to Earth? How is it humankind wants so much to leave a record of having been here?

A tall marker, carved like a Grecian urn, holds a thriving wild huckleberry and a dead rose bush. On the stele is carved “Pioneer.” Mosses have filled in the name and dates. It seems best to leave the mosses and huckleberry to their process and wonder if he was also “Father.”

Did young Willie Winkler — 1892-1918 — die in France?

What sort of medicine did Charles Bensell, M.D., July 4, 1800 — June 22, 1875, practice? He might have made house calls on a strong horse.

There are amulets of remembrance left on coffin-sized sunken spots in the ground in front of the stones. A plastic dog, a chubby terra cotta angel, crosses, lambs and bedraggled plastic flowers leaning cheerlessly over untended plots.

Lenore Clinton lived as long as I have. She died in 1865 and rests under the inscription “Home With Jesus.” Are these the words she chose as an introduction to her descendants? Did she go to her grave, content with her life and the expectation of heaven? What did she regret, and what gave her satisfaction? Who missed her?

Memorial Day is officially on Monday, but it is any day we reflect on the shortness of life and the opportunity to love.

Peg Elliott Mayo writes from the Coast Range. She invites comment at uncommonideas@rivervoices.com and readers to her blog: www.peak.org/~pegmayo/