A Walk in the Woods: Part Four (Last Entry)
Most definitely the strangest/most intriguing plot in the whole cemetery; the more I wrote about it, the more weird things about it occurred to me. It got so long, and so perplexing, that I decided it deserved its own entry.
Now... there's all sorts of things that are funky about this one. First of all, it's the most recent grave in the cemetery. Well...the most recently born, anyway. I think it's actually the most recently deceased, too, but I can't be sure of that. There are a couple of clustered family plots where a more recent relative chose to be buried close to their ancestors, or great- great- grandma was particularly long lived. But this birth date -- 1986? That was only fourteen twenty-four [I can count, I swear] years ago. This kid wouldn't hardly even be an adult yet.
Secondly, there is no last name. Ian who? And not only that, but there is no consistency between this grave and the ones adjacent to it -- it doesn't appear to be part of a family cluster. You can't look at the two beside it and go "Oh, this must have been their son" because, well, there aren't any that are actually immediately adjacent, and the ones that are closest to it are more than a hundred years old.
Then for another thing, it's facing the wrong way. Most cemeteries bury all their inhabitants in the same direction. I forget whether it's east-facing or west-facing, but in the Christian mythology (which follows given that whether the church "owns" this cemetery or not, who else would have been responsible for burying a young child here given that it's directly across the street?) all bodies are buried in the same direction because the idea is that the deceased will be able to stand up fully intact when Jesus returns, and they want to be facing their (S)savior when they do.
Even in cemeteries where the graves do face in opposing directions, all the ones I've seen have traditionally had alternating rows -- two rows facing each other, two rows back to back, etc., or they're like the walled-in necropli of New Orleans and France, where every grave faces inward from its particular wall. But in this case, this is one of maybe two marked graves I can think of that is facing this way -- the only other one is that Donald Stewart one with the weird semi-graffiti on the back. There are a few unmarked ones that may be turned this way (like the one under the tree with the circle around it that I posted in the earlier entry); obviously without a headstone, it's pretty hard to tell. But even though this graveyard is kind of wily-nily in its approach to burial locations --they're scattered all over, no specific "rows" that I can identify except where large families like the Iveys have all been buried side by side --the placement of this one is just...odd. It's set apart, off kilter, and in every way meant to be seen as an individual marker.
It occurs to me that maybe it had something to do with the fact that whatever happened to this poor Ian kid, maybe whoever buried him didn't know whether he'd been baptised or not. Given that the only other grave turned this way is a baby who didn't live a full twenty four hours, and especially if that infant was stillborn the way I think, then it's pretty certain that the kid wouldn't be baptised. And if a lot of the unmarked graves are slaves like I think they must be -- otherwise some kind of record would have surely surfaced to identify at least some of them by now--then they wouldn't have been baptised either. So maybe that explains it--maybe you're only allowed to stand up and face your savior (again, the Christian mythology) if you have already been "saved" -- that would also explain why the infant's tomb says "Asleep in Jesus" -- I'm sure that religious parents would have adamantly argued that their baby would have gone to Heaven if Jesus had claimed him before he was even born.
So maybe that explains why he's set apart, but that doesn't solve the greater issue. Who is Ian? Why was he buried in this cemetery, where no one else has been buried unless they had five or six relatives already here since about 1950? If he had parents, and surely he must have, somewhere -- why did they choose to bury him here? Was he a runaway, an orphan? If he was left on the church steps, so to speak (and who even does that in 1986?)...wouldn't they have baptised him? Wouldn't someone have adopted him? Was he murdered, and someone in the congregation found him? The kid was only eight years old...what could have happened to him that not even a subsequent investigation could turn up the rest of his name? An if the kid was truly unidentifiable, then how did they come to bury him as "Ian"?
Whoever Ian is, then burying him here has definitely made him "immortal". A year from now, I doubt I'll remember the name of the Revolutionary soldier, much less any of the other interesting ones I found, but how could anyone who ever comes across it forget the enigmatic "Ian"? I hope that's of some comfort to someone out there who loved him, who misses him, who may not even know that he's gone. He made not have been significant in life, but he'll be a conversation starter for certain for the rest of time.
* * *
Anyway, there were other things about this cemetery that were really neat --different kinds of headstones, the seemingly haphazard way some of the graves have been meticulously cared for and others have gone entirely to weeds, etc.-- and there are a whole bunch more pictures, but I've already dedicated four entries to this topic now, so I'm leaving it here. I'll post the link to the whole set: here for anybody who wants to look, and if you want any questions or comments about any of the rest of them, let me know.
Now... there's all sorts of things that are funky about this one. First of all, it's the most recent grave in the cemetery. Well...the most recently born, anyway. I think it's actually the most recently deceased, too, but I can't be sure of that. There are a couple of clustered family plots where a more recent relative chose to be buried close to their ancestors, or great- great- grandma was particularly long lived. But this birth date -- 1986? That was only fourteen twenty-four [I can count, I swear] years ago. This kid wouldn't hardly even be an adult yet.
Secondly, there is no last name. Ian who? And not only that, but there is no consistency between this grave and the ones adjacent to it -- it doesn't appear to be part of a family cluster. You can't look at the two beside it and go "Oh, this must have been their son" because, well, there aren't any that are actually immediately adjacent, and the ones that are closest to it are more than a hundred years old.
Then for another thing, it's facing the wrong way. Most cemeteries bury all their inhabitants in the same direction. I forget whether it's east-facing or west-facing, but in the Christian mythology (which follows given that whether the church "owns" this cemetery or not, who else would have been responsible for burying a young child here given that it's directly across the street?) all bodies are buried in the same direction because the idea is that the deceased will be able to stand up fully intact when Jesus returns, and they want to be facing their (S)savior when they do.
Even in cemeteries where the graves do face in opposing directions, all the ones I've seen have traditionally had alternating rows -- two rows facing each other, two rows back to back, etc., or they're like the walled-in necropli of New Orleans and France, where every grave faces inward from its particular wall. But in this case, this is one of maybe two marked graves I can think of that is facing this way -- the only other one is that Donald Stewart one with the weird semi-graffiti on the back. There are a few unmarked ones that may be turned this way (like the one under the tree with the circle around it that I posted in the earlier entry); obviously without a headstone, it's pretty hard to tell. But even though this graveyard is kind of wily-nily in its approach to burial locations --they're scattered all over, no specific "rows" that I can identify except where large families like the Iveys have all been buried side by side --the placement of this one is just...odd. It's set apart, off kilter, and in every way meant to be seen as an individual marker.
It occurs to me that maybe it had something to do with the fact that whatever happened to this poor Ian kid, maybe whoever buried him didn't know whether he'd been baptised or not. Given that the only other grave turned this way is a baby who didn't live a full twenty four hours, and especially if that infant was stillborn the way I think, then it's pretty certain that the kid wouldn't be baptised. And if a lot of the unmarked graves are slaves like I think they must be -- otherwise some kind of record would have surely surfaced to identify at least some of them by now--then they wouldn't have been baptised either. So maybe that explains it--maybe you're only allowed to stand up and face your savior (again, the Christian mythology) if you have already been "saved" -- that would also explain why the infant's tomb says "Asleep in Jesus" -- I'm sure that religious parents would have adamantly argued that their baby would have gone to Heaven if Jesus had claimed him before he was even born.
So maybe that explains why he's set apart, but that doesn't solve the greater issue. Who is Ian? Why was he buried in this cemetery, where no one else has been buried unless they had five or six relatives already here since about 1950? If he had parents, and surely he must have, somewhere -- why did they choose to bury him here? Was he a runaway, an orphan? If he was left on the church steps, so to speak (and who even does that in 1986?)...wouldn't they have baptised him? Wouldn't someone have adopted him? Was he murdered, and someone in the congregation found him? The kid was only eight years old...what could have happened to him that not even a subsequent investigation could turn up the rest of his name? An if the kid was truly unidentifiable, then how did they come to bury him as "Ian"?
Whoever Ian is, then burying him here has definitely made him "immortal". A year from now, I doubt I'll remember the name of the Revolutionary soldier, much less any of the other interesting ones I found, but how could anyone who ever comes across it forget the enigmatic "Ian"? I hope that's of some comfort to someone out there who loved him, who misses him, who may not even know that he's gone. He made not have been significant in life, but he'll be a conversation starter for certain for the rest of time.
* * *
Anyway, there were other things about this cemetery that were really neat --different kinds of headstones, the seemingly haphazard way some of the graves have been meticulously cared for and others have gone entirely to weeds, etc.-- and there are a whole bunch more pictures, but I've already dedicated four entries to this topic now, so I'm leaving it here. I'll post the link to the whole set: here for anybody who wants to look, and if you want any questions or comments about any of the rest of them, let me know.