Two Roses
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It's not an easy place to find.
You have to turn off of the two-lane highway onto a parish road, and then onto a gravel road that runs right by a house. Looks more like a driveway than a public road. You wind your way through the woods, pass by a couple of ratty trailers and the road dead ends at a clearing. In the clearing is a little red brick church and an old cemetery.
My best friend is buried in that cemetery, next to his parents. We stopped by to put some new silk flowers in the holder on the tombstone. He has children, but they never seem to have the time to change out flowers. The wife puts new flowers on family graves every Easter, Christmas and the Fourth, so I guess one more grave isn't asking too much of her. I pack the flower tote and dispose of the old flowers, she picks the colors and does the arranging.
I had a little time while she was working, so I wandered around a bit. Like I said, it's a pretty old cemetery and a few of the tombstones are from the 1880's. I noticed a grave over in the back corner, all by itself, nothing else close to it. I walked over to look and I guess the reason I'd missed it before, was that there was no monument. Just a small eighteen inch square piece of concrete flush with the ground, with crudely done letters drawn into the slab. There was a "D" at the top and then a name underneath. The concrete was very old and the letters were eroded so badly, I couldn't read the name, even after brushing off the top.
It must have been a child's grave. There were a couple of little angel figurines by the slab. Really small, just a couple of inches high, white at one time, but now almost black with dirt and mold. Not much sunshine in that part of the cemetary, as it's shaded on one side by an old cedar and the cemetery backs up to some thick woods. That corner has no grass, just dirt covered mostly by green moss.
Maybe that's why I noticed the grave...Two miniature roses, each no more than six inches high, were planted at the head of the grave, above the little slab. Each one had a couple of red flowers bloomed out, no bigger around than a quarter. You could tell by the fresh dirt, somebody had planted the roses this past week.
Country church cemeteries are kinda unique. You'll see some pretty fancy tombstones occasionally. Maybe just one or two. They really stand out. Lots of those Woodmen Of The World tree stump stones in our part of the world, at least a couple in every cemetery. Rounded white marble for some of the older or military graves. Maybe even a CSA tombstone, depending on the cemetery. Mostly just gray tombstones, with a smattering of black or red newer ones, nothing ostentatious...Just the sort of thing working class country folk can afford, almost always adorned with an appropriate Bible verse. And you have some unmarked graves or graves with very simple, homemade markers...Remember, if you were a member of the church, and oftentimes not, your plot cost the family nothing.
This child's grave with the two roses must have been one of those...A family with little or no means, and a child that died. Not uncommon in those days, especially before WW2, to see a good many children's graves in any of those old cemeteries. A death of a child is uncommon today, not so back then. The parents of those children are all dead today, since their birthdates are usually late 1800's to around 1920, as you can tell by their tombstones, next to their children's.
I just had to stand there and ponder a moment. The grave was very old, the worn lettering attested to that. Those graves usually don't have any flowers, as their families have died out or moved on. There were no parents buried beside the child's grave. There was nobody else buried in that corner of the cemetery.
Yet...There were two miniature roses, freshly planted, by someone who took the time and effort to buy and plant them, at a grave that had been ignored for years. Wonder why?
I wish the two roses could talk...
A death of a child is uncommon today, not so back then.
When I was reading all my presidential bios I was struck by how common it was for these future presidents to lose a child. And for the most part they were well off.
Only non-witches get due process.
- Cotton Mather, Salem Massachusetts, 1692
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@jolly, you should be a writer.
Death rituals are interesting in different cultures and places
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A death of a child is uncommon today, not so back then.
When I was reading all my presidential bios I was struck by how common it was for these future presidents to lose a child. And for the most part they were well off.
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The emotional impact wasn't the same as it is now, because almost everybody around you went through it too.
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@jolly, you should be a writer.
Death rituals are interesting in different cultures and places
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@jolly, you should be a writer.
Death rituals are interesting in different cultures and places
@taiwan_girl said in Two Roses:
@jolly, you should be a writer.
One of my very earliest memories of this forum was in 2005 and reading the prose by @Jolly and others.
@Jolly i wonder if it was a grave for twins?
Also, even in the northern Virginia area, there are many really really really really old graves, that are worn away because they were installed “flat” (parallel) with the earth.
I remember an old stat that said 1 in 2 babies would die in the 1800s? Something like that.
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@taiwan_girl said in Two Roses:
@jolly, you should be a writer.
It is a gift of many from the South. Larry's a good teller of tales as well. A lot of learning occurs listening to those tales.
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In some areas, children were not named until age two. I don't know that it took away the sting or reduced the pain, but they wanted to save the name for another chance to use it.
In some areas, children were not named until age two. I don't know that it took away the sting or reduced the pain, but they wanted to save the name for another chance to use it.
In Taiwan (and many other Asian countries), there is a bigger celebration when the baby turns one year old rather than when it is born.
I always think that it goes back to when many babies dies very young. If they made it to age one, there was a better chance they would live.
