Kinda the way I feel.
One thing I generally do when going back home is I stop at the cemetery where my parents are buried. I know that is not the practice for a lot of folks nowadays, but there is just something that draws me there; and the cemetery is just a bit off the highway. In the mad rush of the world, I think sometimes it would be good for all of us “to take a little walk through a cemetery” every so often. I will say, it is a place where you can hear yourself think and no one will try to interrupt.
While there this time, I met the caretaker. “I notice you stoppin’ here from time to time, notice your car,” he said to me. “Don’t have many folks comin’ by here drivin’ fancy vehicles like that Corvette convertible.” I smiled. We talked a bit, and I asked him how long he had been working there. ‘Bout forty years, I reckon.” “You gonna be laid out here?” he asked. Again I smiled, this time to myself. “Hadn’t really thought about it that way, but, yes, my wife and I do have burial plots here, purchased them when my mother died and was buried here in 1999.” “Well, stay as long as you please, never crowded here at night.” He chuckled. With that he went back to his cutting grass.
In the wintertime, I rake the leaves; and in the summer I cut the weeds.
And then they all go away,
But through their grief, I still can see their hate and greed and jealousy.
So here I work and I somehow hide from a world that rushes by our side,
And each night, when I rest my head, I’m contented as the peaceful dead.
Once I was a young man, dashing with the girls.
Now, no one wants an old man I lost my handsome curls.
But I want to say, when my time comes, lay me facing the rising sun,
Put me in a corner, where I buried my pup. Tell the preacher to pray, then cover me up.
Don’t lay flowers where my head should be, maybe God will let some grow for me.
And all the little children that I loved like my own, will they be sorry that ole John’s gone?
But who’s gonna cry when ole John dies?
Who’s gonna cry when ole John dies?”
================================================================================================July 10, 2010
Keep on,
Larry Adamson