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graveyard

Started by billy rubin, January 11, 2020, 08:56:00 PM

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billy rubin

went to a funeral at my meetinghouse today. an old friend, an unusual quaker, a military veteran.  most quakers of my branch are explicit pacifists, in accordance with some 350 years of theological tradition.

i don't retain the theology, but pacifism still makes the most sense to me, all things considered, nihilism and all.

when he had joined the military as a young man, an elder in my meeting wrote to his family to tell them that people like them shouldn't be in the religious society of friends. they withdrew fro some twenty or thirty years, then reconciled when it ws straightened out. his chapter of the veterans for foregn wars came over to give him a six gun salute and play taps, which is what the miltary does for veterans around here. they wouldn't come into the graveyard, but did it all from outside the fence. i suspect the pacifism had something to do with that still.

i'm one third of the meeting graveyard committee, so i'm responsible for burying people. after the stuff at the grave was over and people went back inside, i went back to the graveyard and found old robert filling in the hole by himself.

what are you doing?

filling the hole. youre just in time.

(the hole was filled)

i said,  get out, and got down on my hands and knees to pack earth into the crevices between the turf he'd carefully laid back over the hole.

luckily it wasn't a big hole, as it held ashes only for my friend and his wife, and wasn' deep either.

our graveyard is kind of messy. its got quakers in it going back some two hundred plus years, and most of them pre-date the fence. we found out a couple of years back that we'd put the western fence too close to the graves, and everybody's feet were sticking over into the adjoining property. not a problem until somebody starts digging with a backhoe. i'll put up a better fence sooner or later, and we'll move it out far enough to protect everybody's feet.

got finished up and told robert, you need to call me to help with this. he said, i know. so i told lois ann, his wife, make him call me to help.

she said, i did, and he wouldn't.

so i'm going to have to keep better track of who's alive and who's recently dead, or robert is going to die himself filling up graves alone. i'll be 64 years old tomorrow, but i can still carry a hundred pounds of sand back up from the graveyard to the meeting house in one trip. he's been doing all the work, and he needs to head over to the dead pecker bench for a rest.

time to change the guard on the graveyard committee.


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