Revisiting
the Cemetery
Good News Paper
Published in 1998
It wasn’t
until I slowed down to pull into the dirt driveway that my wife realized
we were visiting the cemetery. While driving away from church that morning,
I’d told her I had a surprise for her, but she thought I was taking
her to a Chinese restaurant or to Wendy’s or to someplace else we
like. I don’t think the cemetery was high on her wish list. But she
had said she wanted to go there at some point, and since we were heading
back home to Florida a few days later, I needed to take advantage of the
opportunity.
The object
of her desired visit? To see the place where my mom and dad’s bodies
are buried. I know that sounds a little morbid, but it’s important
to emphasize that a cemetery ultimately doesn’t really contain anybody––just
a bunch of bodies. I’ve never placed much emphasis on “visiting”
my parents, mostly because I know where they really are. But I do recognize
the value of visiting a gravesite as a focal point for processing one’s
feelings for lost loved ones, so I happily brought Sophia and our daughter,
Maria, to the plot.
Sophia never
met my parents––they died almost exactly 15 years ago. August
28, 1982, feels like 1882 in terms of where I’ve traveled since then
in every imaginable facet of life. I’ve gone off to college, graduated
from college, traveled to Europe, moved to California and back and then
to Florida, had a couple of girlfriends, gotten married, become a father––not
all of that in any particular order (though I did get married before becoming
a father). For better or for worse, I’ve had too active a life to
take much time to think about missing my mom and dad, quite frankly.
But being
a husband and father myself has helped me relive and preserve that family
legacy. Sophia’s curiosity has much to do with it. She’s the
one who wept when she heard my dad’s voice on an audiotape I made
when I was 9. She’s the one who’s just as likely as me to recount
some story about them, like the time I impersonated my mom by wearing
a gray wig and walking into the living room and shouting my dad’s
name at him while my brother convulsed in laughter on the floor for several
minutes.
Even Maria’s
in on the act now. She begs to look at the pictures in the hallway––she
especially likes the ones with my mom and dad and I playing kazoos. I
point at their photo portraits and ask her, “Who’s this?”
And she dutifully replies, “Grandma Schwarz,” for both of them
(she hasn’t quite verbally mastered “Grandpa” yet).
No matter
how passively or actively I ignore Mom and Dad’s memory, I can’t
forget them. That cemetery may be more than a thousand miles away from
me now, but I always end up revisiting there, both literally and figuratively.
As I think about that trip there with Sophia and Maria, it occurs to me
that when we go to the graves of those we love, we’re reminded that
they haven’t really died.
On a spiritual
level, the Bible teaches us that those who trust in Jesus Christ alone
to forgive their sins will have eternal life, and those who don’t
will spend eternity separated from God in a place called hell. My mom
and dad knew Jesus, so I know where they live today, and it’s not
in a box in a cemetery.
Unfortunately,
if you’ve lost a loved one you may not have the same sense of assurance
of their eternal destinations, but even so, you do have a measure of hope
on a personal level. The positive memories of the one you’ve lost
live on in your heart, and you can take steps today to preserve those
memories and to learn from the examples of that person’s life. I’m
glad my wife and daughter help remind me of that.
Former
Syracuse resident Paul Schwarz now lives near Orlando, Fla., where he
works as a writer and editor for Worldwide Challenge magazine,
a publication of Campus Crusade for Christ. His wife, the former Sophia
Conley, once worked at WMHR in Syracuse as an on-air announcer and public-affairs
director. They have a 2-year-old daughter, Maria.