Recognize the earth in me

"How often have I seen the reflection of Thy glory in the faces of the dead. How resplendent they were, with beauty and heavenly joy. How ethereal, how translucent their faces; how triumphant over suffering and death, their felicity and peace. Even in the silence they were calling upon Thee. In the hour of my death, enlighten my soul, too, that it may cry out to Thee: Alleluia!" - from an Akathist of Thanksgiving

No grass yet covers my aunt's grave; and although the clods of dirt enveloping her earthly remains are not newly dug, they give testimony to the recentness of her death. Fresh. Fresh as the tears unexpectedly coursing down the cheeks of her youngest daughter on this day as her one-year-old son receives a gift bearing the mark of his departed grandmother. I embrace her shoulders with my arms, my cousin six months my elder, and offer comfortless words, "She is with us, but not how we would like." Later the seven of us, my husband, mother, children, and I kneel and stand at my aunt's grave as the sun begins to set, and we place fuschia colored roses upon the earth. Russell launches into a prayer, and from his innocent lips arises a mixture of "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us," and "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." Lucia dressed in an outfit as pink as the flowers she offers, prances around the graves of my Aunt Margaret and my cousin Sheri. From her lips emerge kisses which she unhesitatingly places on their headstones. "I love Aunt Margaret," she lilts, and we smile at her purity of heart. 

It is Chuseok, Korean Thanksgiving, and as part of the holiday, we pay homage at the graves of our family members departed this life before us. And in that tiny country cemetery, there are many of my relations: Aunt Margaret; cousin Sheri; my paternal grandparents, George and Anna Swanson;  my father's cousins, Margaret and Frances, who spent countless Christmas Day dinners with our family, issuing forth a cacophony of chatter which once caused my Uncle Russ to remark that the following year he was determined to bring a whistle to indicate when someone's turn to speak was finished. I kneel again at the graves of these loved ones whose paths mysteriously interweave with my own, brushing off the dry grass from the stones, placing a single rose on each. As the leaves fall around me and the warmth of the day submits to the chill of the autumn evening, I turn to leave my kin. "Grant them rest, O Lord, with the place of Thy saints. May they dwell where the light of Thy countenance shines. May their memory be eternal. Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy."  

Testament

Wendell Berry

And now to the Abyss I pass

Of that Unfathomable Grass...

1.

Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath

Grows large and free in air, don't call it death --

A word to enrich the undertaker and inspire

His surly art of imitating life; conspire

Against him. Say that my body cannot now

Be improved upon; it has no fault to show

To the sly cosmetician. Say that my flesh

Has a perfect compliance with the grass

Truer than any it could have striven for.

You will recognize the earth in me, as before

I wished to know it in myself: my earth

That has been my care and faithful charge from birth,

And toward which all my sorrows were surely bound,

And all my hopes. Say that I have found

A good solution, and am on my way

To the roots. And say I have left my native clay

At last, to be a traveler; that too will be so.

Traveler to where? Say you don't know.

2.
But do not let your ignorance
Of my spirit's whereabouts dismay
You, or overwhelm your thoughts.
Be careful not to say

Anything too final. Whatever
Is unsure is possible, and life is bigger
Than flesh. Beyond reach of thought
Let imagination figure

Your hope.

That will be generous

To me and to yourselves. Why settle

For some know-it-all's despair

When the dead may dance to the fiddle

Hereafter, for all anybody knows?

And remember that the Heavenly soil

Need not be too rich to please

One who was happy in Port Royal.

I may be already heading back,

A new and better man, toward

That town. The thought's unreasonable,

But so is life, thank the Lord!

3.

So treat me, even dead,

As a man who has a place

To go, and something to do.

Don't muck up my face

With wax and powder and rouge

As one would prettify

An unalterable fact

To give bitterness the lie.

Admit the native earth

My body is and will be,

Admit its freedom and

Its changeability.

Dress me in the clothes

I wore in the day's round.

Lay me in a wooden box.

Put the box in the ground

4.

Beneath this stone a Berry is planted

In his home land, as he wanted.

He has come to the gathering of his kin,

Among whom some were worthy men,

Farmers mostly, who lived by hand,

But one was a cobbler from Ireland,

Another played the eternal fool

By riding on a circus mule

To be remembered in grateful laughter

Longer than the rest. After

Doing that they had to do

They are at ease here. Let all of you

Who yet for pain find force and voice

Look on their peace, and rejoice.

Photos taken on two subsequent days, first at Blackhawk State Park and then at Stones Apple Orchard.