It Is Well

Long Hill Cemetery is an easy walk from my house.  Nestled in a twisty, crowded suburban neighborhood, it is the final resting place for many of our town's oldest families since the early 1800s.  Many names are familiar to me either because they also appear on street signs or some of their descendants are alive and active in town.  Some markers are those tall obelisks  on which entire families are listed.  Some are marble so old they have broken apart and eroded.  Some are small square bumps that can trip me if I'm not careful.

The one that is compelling to me is Mary's.  It's surface is eroding too,  but it is a good sized, hefty cube with edges carved like columns and a fading sprig of lily of the valley in bas relief.   It stands between the thinner headstones of Mr. and Mrs. Beard, birth and death dates noted; and someone who was the 25-year-old son of Somebody and Glenda Blackman.  What draws me to it time and again is the simple inscription:

Mary

It Is Well

No last name.  No dates.  No relationship.  My first thought is that she was a family slave who bore no surname and whose age was a mystery.  Perhaps she was the illicit lover of the 25 year old and her disgrace was buried by her anonymity.  I may never know the facts.  Indeed, they are of little consequence.  What does matter is the clear sense that, despite her obscurity, Mary was worthy of regard.  Whether the providers of the tombstone chose it out of respect or remorse, it is a stone that was far more costly and far more embellished than its neighbors.

As I said in my first blog posting, I'm just writing to share my own disparate musings and discoveries with you.  I don't know why I'm writing this particular posting except that I feel compelled to.  Just as inexplicably, Mary draws me close to her, and I go to the cemetery purposely to visit with her.  But I cannot intellectualize this, nor do I desire to.  This is a matter for the heart.  Whoever she was reaches out to me over 100 years later.  And it is well that I should simply bear witness to her silent grace.

Pax tecum, Mary.  And to you all.