BETH

My 17 year old granddaughter, Sarah, is with us during this Thanksgiving week. This is her first visit with us since my mother passed away earlier this year. Mama had been residing in a local nursing facility for quite some time, and Sarah always asked me to take her out there when she visited with us. To say my mother was keen on Sarah would be a gross understatement. She loved Sarah and Sarah loved her.

Thus, this time around Sarah asked me to drive her out to the cemetery to ‘pay her respects.’ I did. And on the way out there I offered that perhaps we could also stop by a few of my classmates grave sites. We did.

Many of my class mates have preceded me in death; some before they even graduated from high school. Some as middle aged adults. Some in the past few years. I suppose a quarter of them are gone now. Thus far, God has given me grace to live a full 2/3 of a century on this planet. 

And while I know that one day I must join those who have gone on before me, I am thankful for the opportunity I’ve been given to live, and breathe, and move for so long, and to impact the world around me. Some who now rest beneath granite and marble markers were not as fortunate.

When I make my regular pilgrimage to the local cemetery, I always visit one grave site in particular. 

Beth 

Before her own death, her mother wrote a small volume in which she alluded to Beth’s untimely demise. While I will not pursue the details here, suffice it to say this young lady was a senior, and nearing graduation when the accident occurred.

I was a year ahead of Beth in school and had graduated the previous June. I had the privilege of knowing her, from a distance at least, since we were both members of the choral group. Odd, I don’t recall exchanging a word with Beth, (or vice versa) during those two or three years we sang together. But I was aware her father was a music pastor in a nearby church, and that she was a devout Christian. 

A few years ago I made up an online memorial page for Beth, and included the following words as a tribute to her.

"Beth, so utterly sad that you were taken from us before your time. It always seemed to me that your friends lingered, and were reticent to leave you. I think you knew how to be a friend. And it always seemed to me that your smile betrayed some hidden secret that begged to be found out. It is a privilege to caretake your headstone, to pull a few weeds, to keep your name legible, since you deserve an identity; even in death. You had such inestimable potential; the dreams that were never realized. May you Rest in Peace, dear friend. May our Father hold you in the very hollow of His loving arms."

But to resume my story.

Sarah and I stopped by Beth’s grave site yesterday, and I was surprised to see something which had not been there on my previous visit. Lying next to her headstone was a newly placed pink granite marker, perhaps 20 inches square, and inscribed with the words,

“IN MEMORY OF BETH” 

Of course, I immediately wondered who might have ordered and had it installed there.

However, more crucially than any tangible tribute such as this, it seems to me that our very lives should reflect the message on that stone, that we ought live every day with gentle spirits like Beth in mind; who were denied a long and fulfilled life, and the wherewithal to make the kind of difference that this young lady would, no doubt, have made.

By William McDonald, PhD. Copyright pending. 2016

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