My Favorite Walk

For now, my family lives in the city. It’s lovely having just a two-block walk to our library and buying groceries only minutes from home, but I miss the space and solitude of the country. So, whenever we have a bit of extra time for our daily constitutional, the kids and I like to head up the hill to the local cemetery. It’s one of the advantages of knowing Jesus and his word: there is nothing to be feared from this place of memories.

I didn’t plan it this way, but these jaunts have taken on a substantial role in our educational process.

First, there’s math. How long did this person spend on earth? “Anna” is one of our favorites because she lived to see her centenary, but that is very rare. Usually we have to borrow tens and often cross centuries.

Then there’s history. I should do something more formal like searching for images of local people from the eras we notice. Our cemetery’s oldest markers date back to a group of fallen Civil War soldiers and the regular tombs pick up from the late Victorian. I enjoy imagining the styles of the different people and wonder how pretty some poor young miss looked in her hoop or hobble skirt shortly before death took her.

Culture stands out strongly when we reach the ridge where the Jewish section is. I’ve had to explain to my little ones not to mess with the smooth stones left on top and we’ve looked at the Hebrew lettering as well as the dates they use to mark their timeline from the creation of the world.

Geology takes center stage as I try to read the simple white limestone tablets of some early markers. For the most part, the rain has dissolved so much around the carvings that nothing can be read any more. But not the granite! It might be slightly obscured by lichen, but you can read nineteenth century stones as clearly as those laid last year.

Medicine comes in as we grieve for the many families who laid small children to rest (one stone bears the names of three girls lost before reaching double digits). Once while looking at a cluster of infant markers, I gathered the children and explained to them how we would have lost one of them had it not been for modern medicine. He would have been gone within a week of birth even sixty years ago. Plus, there are several sections where numbers of people under forty were buried in the same year. These kinds of epidemics make international news today, but up until the mid-1900s they struck everyone on earth with fearful regularity.

Most of this I rarely mention and we just enjoy our nature walk through the manicured lawns and oak covered hills. But for me, the stones help keep me centered in a special way I wouldn’t want to miss.

All those people have finished their earthly race. None of them could care less about fashion, public opinion, or the trappings of life so many focus on. I have chosen a life of relative privation compared to what I could have pursued. But none of those people would blame me.

Family. Friends. Relationships. Jesus.

We really do live in the dash between our birth and death dates and someday I’m going to look back on these years of focusing so intensely on my children and I’m going to be eternally grateful I did.

I love visiting the cemetery because it helps me be a better mother, wife, church member, and Christian.

A wise person thinks about death,

but a fool thinks only about having a good time. Ecclesiastes 7:4 Easy-to-Read Version

Cheri Fields is a 2nd generation homeschooler involved in learning and teaching at home since 1982. She currently teaches her seven kids in Michigan and has found ways to include them in the online ministry God has called her to, particularly as cohosts for their family’s podcast. You can find her at https://creationscience4kids.com. She is a member of the International Association of Creation and a graduate of the Institute for Children’s Literature.