children in churchyards

It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.

Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.

The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

Ecclesiastes 4

I just got home from a walk with my two youngest daughters. At first only my 9 year old was going with me, but when the little one heard where we were heading she cried, "Oh, can I come to the cemetery, too?"

My children have always liked graveyards, as we call them. We used to live downtown in Lancaster, PA where we went for walks every day the weather was good enough to be out with several small children and a stroller. One of our favorite destinations was the huge farmers' market where we would frequent our favorite stalls, buy coffee (for me), cheese danish, croissants, and whoopee pies. We would then take our goodies to one of two places: Steinman Park where a lovely fountain made it the coolest place on a hot day and provided wonderful opportunitites for balancing on the top of a short brick wall, or "the churchyard" surrounding St. James Episcopal church, one of the oldest cemeteries in a very old town.

I would sit on one of the wrought iron benches while the kids played around the old graves, many of them raised slabs commemorating the lives and deaths of Revolutionary War veterans. We read the names on the stones, finding our own and our friends' Christian names; we noted who was related to whom and wondered about possible causes of death in children and young mothers; we noted the passing of the seasons by which flowers were in bloom in the churchyard. We always saw the first snowdrops of the spring in the graveyard in late February; the rhodendrun came later. We sat on the sunny benches in early spring and enjoyed the deep shade in July. It was a lovely, friendly, peaceful place which we seldom passed by without stopping.

Ten years ago we moved to a post and beam colonial in northern New England. We happened to buy our house in its two hundredth year. We were sad to leave our old "haunts" in Lancaster, but were delighted to find another ancient graveyard a short walk from our home. We have found the graves of many of the former owners of our house there, as well as Revolutionary and Civil War veterans' names. My children love the two little lambs carved from stone which commemorate the brief lives of two little sisters long gone and have laughed often over the stone which bears the full name of a playmate. Although we don't spend nearly as much time there as we did at St. James, the best sliding hill in the neighborhood is in the cemetery and the children never hesitate to use it after a good snowfall. At such times the house of mourning becomes a house of mirth.

Scripture tells us that death is the last enemy, but that it is also a blessed event for those who are in Christ. It tells us that we should always remember the day of our death with soberness, but that we can look forward to the day we leave this world for our true home. We need not fear death, or its reminders, but should allow it to inspire us to number our days wisely.