mother-son outing

Lucas has chosen an exciting topic for his science fair project.    He is gathering information to determine if people live longer these days.    He is hypothesizing that we live longer than folks from long ago.  
To gather evidence, he and I hit two local cemeteries to record birth and death dates.

I was stoked.     I've always kinda liked cemeteries.   They are quiet and peaceful.     Cemeteries are also very popular destinations.  People are dying to get in.

(and yes, I told that joke to Lucas several times today.)

Call us morbid, (and perhaps our last names is Addams), but some of my own childhood memories (the few that I have) are based in a cemetery.    We didn't think it odd when our family picnicked at the local cemetery.... or when I learned to drive on those little narrow roads.

This afternoon, Lucas and I  headed out for a beautiful sunny afternoon in search of 150 birth-death dates, from three categories.  (death dates before 1900, 1900-2000, and after 2000.)  The last two categories were easy to find.  But the pre-1900 tombstones were rather curious.   It was the first time I had sought out specific grave information, and sadly many tombstones from before 1900 were corroded.    And many of them only included a death date.

I moseyed through the cemetery and Lucas plodded along with a clipboard, being very careful to hop over graves and avoid dead people at all costs.   He was rather hilarious.  I enjoyed teasing him when I saw clumps of mud or weird holes....I'd say, "Look! that's where someone came out!"

Oddly enough, it became serious to me when I started calling out dates to him.   I instantly felt compelled to read the name before I said the date.    The thought that, "these people need to be audibly remembered" crossed my mind.   So many of the graves had been neglected and forgotten.  It was the least that I could do... simply read their names out loud and recognize that they, too, had once lived.   Some of the dates represented short lives, and I momentarily grieved for their families.   And some of the folks had lived long lives.  I smiled over their dates.

And that's what we did for almost three hours.  
It was a productive, well spent, afternoon with my boy.  :)

on death

There is a buzz on Facebook about one of my childhood friends who died this week.   I'm pretty sure that I haven't seen him since middle school, as our middle school population was split between two high schools. He went one way, and I the other.
I can understand the sadness of my classmates.
I also recall small, random things, about Brian. Mostly, I remember his smile. I remember his potential.
But not much else.  (As most of you know.... my memory is utterly useless.)

With that said, my day-to-day has gone on as usual this week.

The thing that I'm most concerned about is that his death is just one more young person - gone too soon.   One more boy growing up without his father.  One more mother having to bury her son.
Everything about Brian's death sucks. Really sucks.

I suppose these things happen as we get older.   We should start expecting tragedy among our peers.  It is certain evidence of our fallen world.    
As we age, we can't avoid it.   Naivety is no longer an option.

I remember that I used to liken the effects of Thayer's death to falling abruptly off of a train.   I had fallen off and everyone else kept going.   And getting back on that train seemed impossible.

This week, I pray for Brian's people - those who were close to him.... who are suddenly standing still, watching the train whiz by.    That's a hard place to be.