Generally I am the first one to see and read our mail.
This past week as I was reading our mail one letter caught my attention. The outside address was that of a limestone company in Effingham, Illinois. When I opened it, it was a bill. I couldn’t figure out why we had a bill from a limestone company.
Then it dawned on me. This past June my ninety-five year old mother-in-law passed away, and my wife made arrangements for a small headstone to be placed at her grave site.
Headstones. Why do we have headstones? To me, there are a lot of reasons why.
A onetime leader of the Jewish nation knew the importance of “Rocks and Headstones.” He once instructed some of his people to go into the bed of a river and take twelve stones and place them along the side of that river. He told them that someday when their children pass that way and ask what happened here? “Why these rocks?” Then they can tell “the story.”
“In the future when your descendants ask their fathers what these stones mean they can be told of what once happened here.”
I am glad I live in a nation that erects monuments and places headstones. Monuments and headstones help teach our history and remind us of it, whether it is our country’s history or our family’s personal history. Both are vital to the health of a country and a family.
So now there will be a small headstone for my mother-in- law on a hillside grave in a cemetery on the outskirts of Effingham, Illinois, next to her husband. Not that this one would be forgotten, but now there will be a marking of her life for her family to visually see and remember how important and influential she was to her family.
There are many things of great importance in the lives of each of us. They should never go untold or unmarked. Headstones and monuments have their place in our lives.
I hope you have headstones and monuments in yours.
May 8, 2014
Keep on,
Larry Adamson