There was a slight drizzle, as it should be. After all, we were walking in an old cemetery, littered with mossy headstones and broken slabs.
Odin was in doggy heaven, racing around the occasional bushes and rocks, poking his head into holes and paths leading from the clearing. I, on the other hand, was apparently the last living human to have walked through the area in several weeks, and the mosquitoes refused to leave me alone.
But I was curious. And curiosity got the better of the insects.
Oddly enough, this was the first time I’d visited the cemetery only just across the road from our home. The original church had burned down 10 years ago, but the graves date back to the early days of 1904. Now all that was left, was a timeline of lost loves and sorrows from Norwegian farmers and their families… and the raspberries scattered along the borders.
I don’t know what it is about history that draws me, but I love it. And here before me was evidence from the lives of just a handful of people I never met. I saw their names … Emmet and Gloria, Anderson and Bertha, Gladys and Erik… and I couldn’t help but wonder what happened to the 18 year old bride, the elderly man from a previous century, or the dozens of babies who lived only a few months, or even weeks.
They lived. They loved. They cried. They worked. And now their names (might) be read on a tombstone of an old, abandoned cemetery, only regularly visited by a neighbour who cuts the grass. Nothing more.
I’ve often struggled between the balance in my life of seizing every moment, and writing it all down. Right when things begin to happen, to get exciting and “memory-worthy”, I suddenly stop taking the time to reflect and grow from those experiences.
It’s a Writer’s Catch 22.
So here I am in August, with the fall chiming warning bells from the scent of peaches and chilly mornings. What was apparently an entire summer of gardens and puppies, nieces and nephews, sunshine and mosquitoes, has nearly gone by; It’s now nothing more than a chiseled date, and a handful of unwritten memories.
I want to keep living the small moments – the apple pies, the coffee dates, the bonfires, and the shelled peas.
But I also want to share the inspirations that come from those moments … and I want to write them all down, describing the picture so clearly that my story becomes His Story, and it becomes Alive and Affirming and Exalting –
More than anything else, I want people to see what’s between the stones – too see more than daydreams and loving memory.
To see Truth, and experience Life.
Sometimes I fear I’ll never be able to do just that. It’s impossible. Out of my reach. Too much for my timetable.
But then I realize, it’s not over yet.
And neither is Today.
