Thoughts on Visiting an Old Cemetery in Apalachicola, Florida

Cemeteries, places of memory and history, offer connections between the quick and the dead. Most of the time, they connect people across the generations, within generations much of the time, and sometimes, when children go to rest in these places before their parents, across the generations in what we see as a wrenching disturbance of the natural order.

In older cemeteries, I sense time differently. I'm aware of the past, reminded (memento mori) of the way of all flesh, and the yearning for lasting memory laid down there along with the remains of people who were loved. All in all, things get into a longer perspective that reflects more of the human experience. I feel connected to these earlier generations, and understand myself as a part of something larger by way of that connection. At the same time, I understand my own life as a small contributor to the enormous variety in the human condition. That understanding, I think, nurtures a healthy sort of humility.

In the photo above, the stone on the right, erected in 1891 for Gustave Peterson, born in 1858 in Kalmar, Sweden, a seaport like Apalachicola, but on the much colder Baltic sea, bears on one side this poignant verse:

Parted friends again may meet,

From the toils of nature free

Crowned with mercy, oh how sweet

Will eternal friendship be.

Mr. Peterson's inscription differs from others, in that eternity is assumed, but no mention is made of heaven, God, Jesus, or angels. Just friends. Contrast it with something more conventional for the time:

God in his wisdom has recalled
The boon that love had given
And though the body molders here
The soul is safe in heaven.
(This is from the stone for the child Louisa Bruni, seen below.)

The joys of human fellowship must have been close to Gustave Peterson's heart, as they are with most of us. The comfort and appeal of "eternal friendship" could soothe a believing heart. Perhaps his religious views differed in emphasis from some of his contemporaries, and we see a bit of his distinctiveness in the words carved in his memory.

Few recent graves occupy space in this cemetery. But one speaks of the desire of a 20th century warrior, a veteran of the Korean war who died in 2008, to rest next to a 19th century ancestor who was a Confederate soldier.

The earlier stone identifies one Eugene Matthews, Co. B, 1st Fla. Inf., C.S.A. Some of the Confederate veterans interred here fought in the infamous PIckett's charge at Gettysbug. Was Eugene one of them? We don't know. His stone doesn't even give his dates--apparently the military affiliation defined him sufficiently for those who chose the stone, possibly with instructions from the deceased. Both of these combat vets have American flags by their monuments--no stars and bars for the Confederate soldier. I wonder when John S. Matthews made his decision to be buried next to his 19th century kinsman.

In another affecting story, two children, their stone tablets joined, lie side by side, having drowned together.

Louisa Bruni, nine years old, and Frank Messina, eight years old. Were they cousins? Playmates? The parents' names appear below the children's--they weren't siblings. Yet the joint monument points to a close relationship. Were they swimming? Victims of a capsized boat?

Other old monuments, like the one above, give the cause of death, and other information by way of words or symbols.

Mr. Hoyle, born in England, died of cholera in 1852, at the age of 47. People, some of them children, in poorer parts of our world, still die of cholera. Frequently. The anchor, its line entwining it, speaks of a man who went to sea. But like other monuments, it raises questions. Was he a deep-water sailor, or, like so many in this town, a fisherman, or an oysterman?


The Spanish moss in the live oaks helps set a mood, something soft that tosses in the breeze gliding over the firmness of the stones. Stones, especially these here, are chosen for their durability. They're hard, and they resist weathering. But even stone monuments, along with the names, and the other words carved there that speak of death and eternity, fade slowly over the decades and over the centuries.  

Other stories here also move the heart. One stone speaks of a man in his early thirties, buried with his 15-month old daughter. Both of them died on the same day. Some local wave of influenza, maybe. More questions.

So, in a place of rest and peace, stones speak of what people did in their lives, who they valued, and how their lives ended. Cemeteries provide outlines of the universal human story. Some memories may be painful, but each of us knows our own life's continuity through the great gift of memory. And history is a form of memory, one that can be deeply engaging. Old stories, and even fragments of old stories, offer memory of events that took place before we were born. We need that kind of memory to know where we came from, because that knowledge helps us understand who we are.

Beach Walks

Seeing forms with the whole body and mind, hearing sounds with the whole body and mind, one understands them intimately.
– Dogen


Beach houses are battered, or maybe caressed, by salty winds, and their history in tropical storms and hurricanes. It gives them a character, weathered yet light. I'm writing with a view, looking up and out through the windows of this house on St. George Island. If it's a distraction, I like it.  

I'm just back from a walk up and down the beach, and some time standing and paddling around in the water. The shore is beautiful to see and to feel, blue-green water, very light-brownish sand, bright warm sunlight, strong but gentle breezes. 

I'm taking all this in through every sense I can call on, with all the consciousness of those sensations I can muster. I watch the bright, constantly changing play of light. The heat of the sun moves on my skin, and in the sea breeze kicked up by the moving heat. I hear a soft and steady rush of air as I walk to the west, and then turn around as I walk back in the direction of the house, facing into the easterly wind, getting a louder roar. 

Back to the beach in front of the house, I walk into the water up to my shoulders. Waves come in, and I breast-stroke over them, letting my body float over the crests. I taste the salt on my tongue, and the subtle scent of the saltwater in the air is amplified.

On the porch, I lie in the sun for a while, within earshot of the immemorial rhythm of the surf-sound. As many times as I've done this, I'm still grateful to be able to watch, hear, breathe in, taste, and feel the world and be moved by the mixing of all its elements here. 

Within, Without

"[T]here was that magic, just that connection, that there was something beyond the world of the everyday. And the way to get there was through nature. The birds knew how to do it. The ice on the puddles knew how to do it. The trees knew how to do it. And I thought that if I could just sort of soften myself then I, too, would be able to enter that world, speak that language, yet be able to come back to this world with wisdom and a story."
--Trebbe Johnson, in an interview with Parabola, Fall 2012

"Birds knew how to do it."  An osprey on Reelfoot Lake floats gracefully into the treetop nest.

"The ice on the puddles knew how to do it." Crystal: the word comes from the Greek for "ice." We've long been copyists of what we didn't make.

"The trees knew how to do it." Springtime, here, new buds opening silently and steadily, changing the scene slightly every day until the leaves emerge fully. 


What is it that birds, ice, and trees know? How to be perfectly themselves, only themselves, unclouded and uncluttered. What Whitman wrote about animals could apply to the entire non-human world:  "Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, / Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, / Not one is respectable or unhappy over the earth."

Consider an old tree stump covered with moss:

The moss, along with other life-forms like beetles, fungi, and a variety of microorganisms, keep the tree, long "dead," in process. It feeds the species that turn it into soil. There is no "waste" in nature. You can read about that in books. Or, you can watch it for yourself, if you look closely. I like to see trees that are left in forests where they fell many years ago slowly crumbling into particles of what they had been. Around the fallen trunks, the tree-particles blend into the earth at some point, and become indistinguishable from the soil. 

Closely watching the natural flow of things is like reading a sacred text. 

Can we "enter that world, speak that language," as Trebbe Johnson says? We don't have to enter it--we're already a part of it. What we have to do is remember our membership. Remember that our human range--in spirit and in body--extends almost unimaginably beyond our egos.

By the Intermittent Creek

This is man's mission! The earth cannot feel all this. We must. Living away from the earth and trees, we fail them. We are absent from the wedding feast. 
--Thomas Merton, journal entry, February 17, 1966.


Early autumn in West Tennessee. Lots of leaves are still green, but fewer every day. The dry creek behind my house is flowing after a few welcome hours of rainfall.

I sat by the creek for a while this morning, listening to wind in the trees, and the softly flowing water. Looking at colors that will be noticeably different next week, for those who look closely. Watching the light play on the ripples in the stream.

Merton is right: we have a function on earth that goes beyond doing the ordinary work of the world. Paying close, loving, attention to what's around us pays us back with  immediate delight of the experience itself, and in later reflection, knowing we have not failed the earth and the trees.

I watched part of what the trees were doing today. They bended with the wind, they dropped leaves, some still green, some more yellow and brown, some in little heaps on the water. Some of the leaves are the color of the stones in the stream bed, in the way that the colors of the earth echo each other in so many forms.

If my mission is to feel the earth coming in through my senses, I accept.