Most of the time, I drive right past the “disused” graveyards. Sometimes, in the winter, when the leaves are off the trees, I see them peering out of the woods are alongside the roads.
Some are tended by neighbors, others by great-great-grandchildren, most are abandoned, left behind and forgotten, the tombstones fallen or cracked, weeds all over the grave.
When I see them, I pull over and walk through the brush to look at the tombstones, if they are still standings. One of the tombstones – Mary, mother of four, wife of Thomas, is so beautiful, I bring flowers in the Spring.
Many people were buried on their own farms, or in small village cemeteries, today the old graveyards are mostly hidden by brush and trees.
One of my favorite Robert Frost poems is In a Disused Graveyard, 1923. Robert Frost’s countryside is still all around, but you have to look for it.
“The living come with grassy tread
To read the gravestones on the hill;
The graveyard draws the living still,
But never anymore the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
“The ones who living come today
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay.”
So sure of death the marbles rhyme,
Yet can’t help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come.
What is it men are shrinking from?
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die
And have stopped dying now forever.
I think they would believe the lie.”
Robert Frost
I felt great sadness in Airth, Scotland, plowing through knee-high weeds to a deserted family graveyard belonging to the burnt out great house there. It was led to originally by an avenue of redwood trees, planted by a tree-lover maybe about 100 years earlier. The trees remain but the graveyard itself was nearly buried..
Here in the foot hill areas of many of the northern California areas you can find many of these. They reveal much history and are often quiet,peaceful and beautiful.