Today I am feeling forlorn and listless for no apparent reason. It wouldn’t take much for me to walk out of my skin and keep on going. Through the kitchen window, I see the snow is melting under a strong sun that has pushed the temperature of the February morning up into the forties. Sometimes light eases this ache of loneliness and air freshens the stale corners of my mind. Rather than climb the walls of my apartment, I decide to go for a stroll.

The Oakland Cemetery at the end of the street is my destination. It is an intimate space where I am usually the only visitor. The grounds are oval-shaped, gently hilled, and surrounded by an impression of woods. Dozens of mature maple, oak, beech, and other deciduous trees spread their branches against the sky. The cemetery’s silence, broken now and again by a resolute woodpecker, wraps around me like a down blanket.

To contemplate the people memorialized here — unique individuals whose lives on earth are complete and whose energy has moved out and on — brings me a measure of comfort. The graves date from the nineteenth century. Some gravestones are so old and worn the inscriptions can be read only with determination and the right light. Other gravestones are more modern or more deeply chiseled; some are made of highly polished granite, others of the slate and marble that were still fashionable in the mid-nineteenth century. Here and there lie recent graves with temporary markers provided by the funeral home that had charge of the burial. One such marker looks like a license plate, a silvery metal rectangle with dark embossed letters and numbers.

At the top of the hill is Section B, where my favorite group of gravestones hovers at the edge of the road in a straggling line: Agnes, Nancy, Almira, and Abijah Lawrence.

Almira’s grave is always my first stop.

ALMIRA LAWRENCE.
WENT HOME  Sept. 23, 1873.

There is a kinship between Almira and me because I want to go home, too, wherever that is. Here in this Boston suburb I feel like an exile, yanked from my deep roots in the Berkshires where I, my parents, and grandparents were born. But even there, amongst all that was familiar, I often felt as I do today when I want to go home in the worst way, a home I can’t define except to know I’m not there. So, I visit Almira and think about the home to which she went, the home of no more controversy, no more anxiety, no more headaches or arthritis, the home of Mother Earth’s gentle, final embrace. The wisdom and faith of Almira’s simple epitaph make me wish I could ask where the inscription came from: whose idea it was, how it was decided, and what lay behind it – and from the answers be granted insights to apply to my own life.

Nancy’s lichen-covered marble gravestone rises tall and mere inches away from the short, sturdy, granite stones of the other women. The top third of Nancy’s stone is devoted to a faded basrelief sculpture of a circle within which a hand — presumably God’s — plucks a flower from a stem bearing several blooms. The inscription below is almost unreadable, melted by wind and rain and ice to merge back with the stone. I like to imagine the inscription has been worn down not only by the weather, but also by the tears her death surely caused.

NANCY A.
Daughter of
Abijah E. & Almira Lawrence
DIED
Oct. 4, 1853
AGED 18 YRS & 11 MOS
Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth

The inclusion of eleven months as a part of her age grabs my heart with its declaration of how precious Nancy’s shortened life was to her parents. I wonder if they would have put the exact number of days, too, if there had been space on the stone or money for the extra letters. If it had been the fashion to inscribe a birth date, I could have counted the days and paid extra homage to their bereavement in the specificity of the counting. Even after 160 years, Nancy’s grave exudes the double grief of losing a beloved, grace-filled daughter and the dreams for her future, the continuation of the family.

A breeze scuffles through the dead brown oak leaves that cling to the branch arched protectively over the Lawrence graves. One of the leaves waves at me like an exuberant toddler. Another detaches from its branch, and I watch it twirl to the ground to Nancy’s right, where Agnes lies.

AGNES V. LAWRENCE
LEFT US OCT. 18, 1879

With nothing to go by, I dare to imagine Agnes as Abijah’s sister, a sister-in-law to Almira, and Nancy’s aunt, the poor relation with no marriage expectations, a practical woman, helpful around the house, a good manager. She was the one who held things together after Nancy died, the one who made the meals, insisted that Abijah and Almira eat a little something, chose the verse from Ecclesiastes for the gravestone. She accompanied Almira to Nancy’s grave to trim the grass around it and lay a posy from the garden at home. I picture her as a bright-eyed robin of a woman whose loyalty and energy were devoted to her family and the things of this world, and yet whose hope lay in the next.

Agnes’ inscription cries loneliness to me as opposed to the faith I hear in Almira’s. There’s an echo of selfishness, a little anger, and a little bewilderment, too, a baffled, abandoned, “Where did you go? And why?”

Almira and Agnes are on either side of Nancy, sentinels protecting the young woman in her eternal rest. Strength flows from these three graves, a statement of the power of female solidarity, the older generation ready and willing to guide the younger with the wisdom garnered from having muddled through hardships, joys, and heartbreaks of daily life. I like to think there is a Heaven where the younger woman was waiting to greet and mentor Almira and Agnes in her turn. Her welcoming presence in the after world must have been a balm that helped heal the sorrow caused by her death in this world.

On Almira’s left, Abijah’s marble stone faces inward, away from the road—in contrast to those of his women folk. The letters of his inscription have softened into a tired blur. Crouching, I run my finger over the words and dates to help decipher them.

ABIJAH E. LAWRENCE
DEPARTED
March 5, 1885
Life’s long warfare is closed at last

Abijah—“my father is Yahweh”—was the last of the quartet to die. The no-nonsense “departed” speaks to me of military exactitude, substantiated by the quote about warfare. I imagine there was no shillyshallying when it came time for Abijah to die. With a salute and an about-face, he went. But his humanity trickles through the words “at last.” I wonder if Abijah’s departure came on a last breath of relief that the conflicts, wounds, crises, and turmoil were finally over. To survive up to the point of an unconditional surrender to natural death is a decisive victory in itself.

The breeze skips back and tickles the hollow below my right cheekbone. The small American flag by Abijah’s stone — a marker of his membership in the Odd Fellows, a charitable organization active even now here in town — springs to attention. About fifty yards away, a larger flag flutters eastward, its red, white, and blue pleating and un-pleating. I rub my hand across the tops of the Lawrence gravestones. Nancy and Abijah’s stones feel like coarse sandpaper, Agnes and Almira’s like rough wool.

Leaving the family to its rest, I amble out of the cemetery and back up the street, my face tilted skyward to absorb the noontime warmth. A host of sparrows glides and swoops and glides again. They know how and when to let the current carry them. My feet step higher at the sight of their easy travel, and I think maybe I can let life’s flow carry me for now instead of pushing against it to search for something I can’t define.

I climb the rickety outside stairs to my second-floor apartment, open the door, and step into a loud, thick, holy silence. Plants drape the windowsills. The cats bask where the sun has pooled. Perfect energetic stillness surrounds, enfolds, and welcomes me home.

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