Old Wooden Cross, Cemetery, In Questa, NM
Old wooden cross in a cemetery, Questa, New Mexico. I can’t pass up a cemetery. I like to stop in at every opportunity. The peace and solitude among the headstones, where even the highway traffic noise fades, I find myself reading the family names. I’m able to glean some insight into the local community. The inscriptions tell me who served in the military; how many grandmothers will be sorely missed by so many. I see the names of mothers, sons, daughters, babies who have left too soon.
I grew up in the “old country across the pond”. We lived a hundred yards from an ancient cemetery at a church mentioned in the Doomsday Book. For all the mossy, lichen, creepy vine adorned headstones, I never felt akin to any of the long dead. In those graveyards, the headstones were a novelty. The oldest, being from umpteen centuries ago, became hide and seek locations in a place where even the ghosts died and stayed hidden!
It could be the proximity to a recent past, standing there feeling the fresh air, surrounded by the names of those still loved in living memory, that makes me feel I belong here. Thanks for looking. G
