Hand in Hand

When I was very young, the shortest of walks stretched into the longest of trips. I would stop to converse with a kitten or a neighbor, or to watch a crocus lift its head through the morning frost. Walks were always adventures to me. My father, who knows how it is to be young, was often my fellow adventurer. He was always there to lift me when I was tired, to show me where to look if I wished to see, and to point out our destination--which, more often than not, was the local cemetery.

The cemetery was an ancient, happy place. We would take rambling walks there on sunny mornings, and my father would teach me about the trees. He laughed as we tried (and failed) to make a fire by rubbing together two twigs in the shadow of a tall poplar. Beneath the branches of another tulip-tree, we discovered the remains of a robin's egg and admired its hue. We tasted red crab-apples and wrinkled our noses at their bitter beauty. There was always so much to wonder at and see.

We walked together, alone and yet not alone--for there were many souls around us. There were always grey flashes of squirrel through the oaks, so fast that they disappeared before I could point them out to my father. There were often birds soaring overhead or making nests in the trees. Even a wild baby rabbit once offered me its trembling nose beneath a willow. I remember more of dewy morning-glories and dandelions than of the silk flowers on the graves. To me, there was more life than death in the graveyard.

Even though the life in the cemetery was more apparent than the death, I did not ignore the standing stones around me. Some were new and some were ancient, some towering monuments and some simple slabs of granite. I read the graven inscriptions sometimes. My father told me how old the stones were, and occasionally what he knew about the people they represented. Some of the stones were black from age, some were smooth from wear and illegible, but always they intrigued me. I would wonder about the people who had once lived--but who were now a name and a set of dates.

There was one shadowed nook in the old part of the cemetery that I always liked to visit. It lay near the cast-iron fence that divided the graveyard from the rest of the small town. It was hidden away by trees interlaced with honeysuckle and ivy and a sprinkling of red azalea. In the lacework made by sunlight and shadow, there was a large block-shaped memorial of marble. My father would lift me onto the stone, and I would read the words upon it. I can't quite recall the name, but I remember that lichens clung to the slight rough recesses in the stone where it was inscribed. We called the slab the Scotchman's Tomb, and my father would speak in a false brogue to put a voice to the unknown one below me.

The messages of the stones were not wholly unfamiliar, but even so they did not frighten me. One stone was a tiny marble lamb. I learned from the inscription that it had been a girl younger than I was. One stone represented the baby sister of a friend, and another marked where a friend would someday lie, but these did not bother me. Perhaps I wasn't affected because I did not fully understand, but perhaps I learned more than I realized. I remember those days as a dream of gold and green, but truths still shine through. I came face to face with the end of life, and watched it peacefully from my place near its beginning. I held no fears, no superstitions, only faith. Maybe those graveyard walks helped me to know a God who can beautify even death.

Once I found a tiny living bird in the graveyard. It was a baby robin that had fallen from its nest. We took it home for the night, and the next morning it was gone. I asked where it was. I was told something I didn't quite understand about its being taken to a friend, but I later found out that it had died in the night. Now that I know the truth, I think I could have handled it. Somehow I have always known that life and death go hand in hand--like a father and his daughter, taking a walk on a spring day.

Carasoyne is 14 years old and in the ninth grade. She lives somewhere near Philadelphia and has been writing for as far back as she can remember. She enjoys writing, but she isn't sure if she will do it for a living. She says "I'm not quite sure what path I'll take -- I'm still waiting to see where life will lead me."