posted January 14, 2009
As I read my e-mail, I listen to a story about a graveyard being robbed. This subject is appalling. This subject as happened to my family, more than once.
A graveyard is a resting place for our loved ones remains. Some find this place as a place to reflect on their loved ones. When I have a hard time at work, I sneak off to where my grandparent’s graves are in Red Bank. I clean the leaves and brush off of their grave. I talk to them as if they are right there with me. I know that they cannot talk back to me but it makes me feel better. Some see a graveyard as a living history book. It is full of untold stories of the past. Every head stone holds their own story.
There is a gravesite not far from my grandparents. Every time I pass by it I feel for the family who lost their loved one. It is a young man who lost his young life. My heart goes out to his family. As many times that I have passed by this well keep gravesite, it has come to my attention that I knew him. He was a young man that graduated with me in school. I remember when he was killed. He was a very nice young man.
People love to decorate the resting place with wonderful flowers and trinkets. During the holidays these places of rest become colorful. My family and I love to take flowers to family members. We find it a wonderful time to learn more family history and a time to bond. One set of my grandparents are buried in Hixson. They are buried in a volt indoors. There was a time that people were stealing the flowers off of their grave. My mother took painstaking time to select flowers to go on their grave. We would come back to retrieve them. They were gone. We let the Hamilton Memorial Gardens know what was going on. There are folks who walk through and steal beautiful flower arrangements and resell them. If there is something that they like, they will take it. Nowadays, it has gone further than just flowers. The brass flower stands, brass plates, flowers and other nice things.
This is a sad state of affairs. These robberies are terrible. People do not have the class not to touch these things. Please respect the ones that these things are meant for. Stealing of any kind is wrong.
My family wires the flowers to the stand and the stand is snug in the concrete handle.
Laura Crane
Red Bank
ToBSketching@aol.com
* * *
Ms. Crane couldn't be more right.
Some years ago, when both my parents were still living, my father was notified that his older brother's grave had been vandalized. He was killed in World War II. For no apparent reason, other than alcohol and
drug-related anti-social behavior, his very stout granite gravestone was turned over, along with a number of others. He and my Dad were very close brothers, and I remember how devastating this was to Dad, about 45 years after his brother's bomber crashed.
Twas a time when every graveyard in the United States had brass markers for veterans. They were handsome memorials, a practice going back to at least our Civil War. Most all of them were stolen and sold for scrap by people without souls long ago.
Keep tending your grandparents' grave, Laura. Talk to them, keep them alive in your heart, which is plainly in the right place.
John R. Smickle
Chattanooga
jsbottomfeeder@juno.com
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