The other day, I found the grave marker of my baby sister. It was an emotional moment, because I was eight when she died as an infant in 1961. She had laid in that spot unvisited for almost twenty years because the only people with sure knowledge of her whereabouts had all passed on. When I found her grave, I saw where other baby angels had been interred. Their gravestones looked as neglected as my sister’s had been.
I don’t write this to sound morbid or make anyone sad. Our society is so fluid today that it’s impossible for most folks to have decoration days like people had in the ‘old days.’ (I remember times when my mother would take us kids up to the Preston, Idaho, cemetery to place flowers at the graves of our ancestors.) My mother and father are buried in Utah, my dad’s parents, as well as my sister, in Oklahoma City. I also have relatives buried in other states.
My son sent me a picture of my dad and mom’s graves a couple of months ago and I saw flowers and flags. (My dad was a veteran.) It is heartening when I see that others have honored grave sites by putting out flowers and flags, cleaning old headstones, fixing broken ones and taking pictures and making records of the names of the deceased. These are sacred and hallowed places, in my opinion.
I don’t know if anyone else does this, but I never go into a cemetery without checking the names to see if any of my relatives might be buried there. Then I get distracted by the loving epitaphs and carved pictures of lambs and angels. I am amazed at some of the dates, way back to Revolutionary time. I have done this in Cade’s Cove, where the graveyards are protected and cared for; I have done it in lonely country cemeteries.
One day, on a whim, I turned up a dirt track off Fingerboard Road in Polk County, (up near the Cherokee National Forest), where a wooden sign announced the McCully Cemetery. Tree branches bent low over the rutted road, making it dusk at noonday. It wasn’t spooky. Rather there was a peaceful aura in this place. I couldn’t help but feel the loving breath of Mother Earth or angels welcoming me. After about a quarter of a mile, a small clearing opened up. I stopped the car and got out, gazing in amazement at the motes of sunlight filtering through ancient tree limbs.
I was amazed to see that this was still a ‘working’ cemetery with a few headstones dated in the early 2000s, but the only way to determine the burial sites of most of the people there was by the moss-covered mounds laying side-by-side. It was quiet; even the birds’ voices seemed muted. A few butterflies floated through the clearing. I was awed and probably stayed there for an hour or more before the deepening dimness told me it was getting late.
An older man who went to my church in Athens died suddenly some years ago. He had no family that either the clerk of our church or the police could find. In a case like this, the city had an agreement with the National Guard armory to bury him in their ‘pauper’s plot.’ Donations allowed a simple casket, more donations gave his grave an identity. Occasionally, before I moved from the area, I would visit his grave site so that he would not be forgotten. No one wants to be forgotten, not even the dead.
Perhaps there is a lonely little cemetery that needs cleaning or headstone names that need recording. And maybe that bit of service will help a person who is unable to visit honor their deceased loved one.

Susan Kite is a member of Author’s Guild of Tennessee and the author of five published books. https://www.amazon.com/default/e/B00J91G0ZU/. She also has two other books in pre-publication, and numerous stories on Archive of Our Own.