Coffee Chat: Start and Stop and Start Again

Hello dears.  Come on in and let's have a warm drink.  Never mind my sniffling.  I am feeling ever so slightly better.  I have been getting plenty of rest and that is more than half the battle.

The winter views lately have been more bare than usual.  So much so that we've seen many a house or pond we never knew existed simply because we can see so clearly through places, we have never been able to see through before.

The one place that tugs at my heart nearly every time we make that ride over to take off the trash, is a little cemetery at the edge of a huge field.  Does it seem odd at my age to think a cemetery looks comforting, peaceful, well placed and restful?  I've always loved cemeteries, for as long as I can recall.  Some are infinitely more peaceful and homier than others.  And this one appears to be all of those things.

There's an old oak tree at one corner of the plot and twin cedars at another corner and a whole line of trees on the west side of the plot.  But the southside is open to the field and because this year the field has been harvested and sown with winter rye, I can clearly see the line of graves inside the space.  It is the most beautiful and peaceful little graveyard, at least seen from the distant curve of the road across the rolling terraces of the field.  It might well be littered and messy with leaves and limbs and debris that has blown in but from that spot in the road, I often think how lovely it would be to look out from that vantage point to the fields all day and night long.  To see the wild turkey and the deer, the skulking coyotes, the foxes, the wild hogs and bobcats, and the hawks and owl that glide through the air.  I think of how peaceful it must be at all hours of the day and night and how neatly it's tucked away into the edge there.  

Now I know that on the north it is bordered by a dirt road.  I've been on that road and have passed that cemetery many a time.  I haven't been in it to see how old or new the graves are, nor done any research on it, though I suppose I could do so.  But I haven't been nearly so impressed with it before as I've become over these weeks of seeing it clear across the field.

We often pass little cemeteries here.  Including the one here on this property, I think there are a total of five within a mile of our house.  We've tried to reclaim the one on the property simply because it is our desire to preserve that bit of history if at all possible.  Long ago it too was filled with cedar trees that marked old gravesites and old fencing that clearly marked the space, but over the years others who had the land cared little for that space.  That cut out the trees and took down the fence and later Mama came along and added in graves of family members and then had a new chain link fence put up about it and then another owner came along and let it grow up with weeds and vines and trees.  When our son bought the property and was finally able to use a bush hog to cut up tto the outside of the fence, we hacked our way into the graveyard and tried to reclaim it.  John's done what he could, but it's been a daunting task.  

There are two more small graveyards up the road a bit from us and they are getting wild and overgrown, too.  I long to go in and tend to them but can't for the life of me figure out how I could climb up the ditch bank to get into them. Not could I remove the trees that have grown up over the past 25 years or so when someone last attended to them.  

Neglected.  Quickly getting lost.  No one left to care and those who might are getting too old for the work of reclamation that is required.

As we drove about the other day, I kept thinking how very neglected nearly every house was looking.  A bit of junk here and a bit of a pile of yard trash there and flowerpots that needed to be refreshed.  Broken steps and scratched up doors.  When we came home, I realized that my own house looked much the same.  We're in winter and all the lovely things, all the softening things that flesh out the yards are gone.  We're left with debris of fallen branches, leaves and broken bits that have blown in.  

Our drive is black and muddy in places because we've had so much rain.  The heart shaped puddle in the driveway is not quite so heart shaped anymore.  It happens to be the spot where all the delivery trucks that come up the drive are stopping and backing up to head out again.  It's a muddy mess and I wonder if it will ever again return.  The carport has held rain so often this year that we haven't parked under the shelter of it in nearly two months.  

The truth is that everything is ugly just now.  We don't have snow to hide the messes and soften the views.  We have mud and debris and dead plants to look at.  There are green fields and daffodils and yellow narcissus blooming along the roadsides, the first flush of winter blooms is on all the trees that Granny called collectively, Maples, though they are quite possibly not maple at all.  But the softening hasn't come to the yards yet, only to the swamps and fields.  

It does make me long to get outdoors and do a world of work, which I confess at the moment I scarcely feel up to doing.  It's just a general sense of too much to do and not enough of me to do it at the moment.

I dreamed of Granny last night.  In the past when I've dreamed of her, she's mostly silent, sometimes vague, as she was towards the end of her life, but last night she started out perfectly lucid and we two talked a few minutes and then we walked a bit.  We listened to lovely music together and then we walked some more, and it was during this second walk that she suddenly grew confused.  And then she was on one side and I on the other with a busy street between.  

How I have longed over the past few months to simply sit with her on the porch and absorb her peacefulness.  How grateful I am that she came to me last night in my dream and that we were able to talk.  I woke with a feeling that all would be well...and with a sense of loss all over again at missing her.  She was such a big part of my life, far more than perhaps she knew.

I found a photo of her amongst the ones Mama left behind in the town house and brought it home.  It sits by my bed and each morning, I wake to look at her laughing face, her bright brown eyes.  It brings me a great sense of comfort.  

I'm afraid this is all I have for you with this chat.  I've started and stopped and started again, many times now.  We'll talk again.