From Grandma's Picture Box

I visited just after Christmas.
I don't know why I always want to stop at the cemetery on our way home from Grandma's but I do.  Though I know Papa is not there, I take a little comfort from being at that place where we all gathered.
This time, as most every other, my eyes also stop on the stones of others.  Those that walked this very ground saying their own good-byes at one time or another, often together, and have since been laid to rest themselves.  Brothers and sisters, by blood or law.
A lifetime of living.
We had just put away one of Grandma's boxes of pictures.  I think there are four.  Under her bed and in her closet.  Full of old black and white pictures that tell stories of their own. Telegrams, deeds, even a poem by my great-grandma.  It's one of my favorite things to do when we are there, to set a box on the dining room table with Grandma, Mom, and anyone else who wants to look, and talk, and listen.  There are sweet stories and hard ones, too.

 
My great-great grandparents.  I am amazed that there is such a picture so many years later, that I am part of them.  This living looks hard.

I love this one because I knew many of them when they were much older.  Some were the brothers and sisters who sat on the carport in the summer to shuck corn or string beans.  The ones we like to visit when we went on walks.

My Grandma Lucy is on the right in the back row.  Her parents are seated.  A few of the children are missing in this photo.  Grandma is the last one living.

"...this was our history and these were our people.  Their names and stories and pictures had a worth to us that was timely and bodily and never to be put in a book."

"And now, as often before, I am reminded how grateful I am to have been there, in that time, with these I have remembered.  I was there with them; they remain with me."

from Andy Catlett Early Travels by Wendell Berry