Old Fashion Graveyard Cleaning

Down the hill, facing the East is a pink granite headstone in West Chilton County. 

The headstone is unique among the gray granite headstones in the Union Springs Baptist Church Cemetery.  The name etched in the pink granite is the only headstone with that name.

I served on the Cemetery Committee for many years.  One of the things the committee did was remodeled the cemetery.  Don’t laugh, it was in terrible shape.  Families had staked out their territories.  Bricks, bushes, wrought iron fences, galvanized pipes with chains, and huge flowerpots marked the boundaries.  Some family plots had pebbles, some white, other colored. There were rose bushes, daffodils, sweet gum trees, and junipers.

Cleaning the cemetery was an annual event, usually before the Easter weekend.  Men and women arrived with rakes, hoes, shovels, wheelbarrows, lawn mowers, weed eaters, and tractors.  With the eagerness of worker honeybees, everyone descended on the cemetery to make the resting place of the dead a thing of beauty for the living.  I remember moments when I would see people weeping over a grave as they cleaned around it.  Most people cleaning the cemetery had loved ones and friends buried there.

Years before the remodeling, the only tool needed was a yard broom made from dogwood saplings.  The cemetery, as most yards did not have grass, so most people sweep the bare ground with the yard broom.  A bare graveyard with thousands of sweet gums balls makes for hard work.  Sweet gum balls in grass, in white pebbles, and all the stuff mentioned above makes it harder.

Even though my dad was not a Christian, he always helped with cleaning the cemetery.  In fact, we did not have to beg him to come to church on Easter.  I wish more pastors and believers would be more sensitive to families that have a dad or others who only attend church at Easter and Christmas.  For a family pleading with tears for a husband and dad to attend church only to have that loved one ridiculed when attending is heart breaking.  I know that I was so happy when daddy went to worship with us at Easter and Christmas.

Years before there was a Cemetery Committee and remodeling, on a Saturday we were cleaning the cemetery.  I have to believe that this catalytic event initiated both.  Here is what happened.  There was discussion on the difficulty of the annual cleaning.  All the stuff in the cemetery had deteriorated with time.  Families did not want their sacred territories disturbed, so anyone who violated this unwritten rule was severely reprimanded.  As a point of interest, most of these sacred territories belonged to folks who never attended the church. You might say they had been grandfathered into ownership.  Their granddaddies planted those trees and placed all the other stuff.  Their descendants continued this possess until this incredible moment in time.

Holy indignation built in the cemetery among those who were entrusted with cleaning in preparation of the Holy Week.  Holy Sacraments of the cemetery were about to face an episode likened to Jesus cleaning the Temple.

A sweet gum tree towered above a grave on a bare bank.  Erosion and sweet gum balls presented a growing problem.  Some men of the church huddled in deliberation to conjure a remedy.  The verdict was the tree needed to go but gripped with fear of retaliation from the Sacred Society of Cemetery Relics and Botanical Substance, no one volunteered.

Daddy, who listened at a distance because he was not a member of the church, asked, “Do you want the tree cut down?”

They replied that they did but feared the repercussions.

Daddy looked at me and said, “Go get the chainsaw.”  I went home to get the McCullough daddy used when he logged for a living.  Daddy reminded me of Jerry Clower’s cousin Marcel Ledbetter, who used a McCullough to get a soft drink, as he fired up the chain saw and felled the towering sweet gum.

Yeah, the family that said they planted the tree was upset.  We did not have to worry about them quitting church because they never came anyway.  Eventually, all the sacred relics and botanical substance were gone as were those who wrestled over the decision and those who retaliated.  Manicured and groomed, the cemetery looks nice today.

I often shed a tear when I visit that pink granite tombstone with the name Hopper on it.  I snigger when I stand at the foot of daddy’s grave.  It is just a few feet from where he created the stir in the cemetery and among those from both sides of the issue.

The old song reminds us that when the Lord returns, the cemetery will be a mess with graves bursting open.

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live:

 And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see.  Jesus wept. (John 11:25, 34-35 KJV)