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Remembrance
As a child, providence gifted me a great-grandmother who spent a week or two with us on occasion. Nana loved taking us on walks. She would pack a picnic basket and stroll with my younger brother and me to the secluded cemetery nearby.
The small New Hampshire cemetery dated back to colonial times. It was one of our favorite destinations. Surrounded by a white picket fence in need of repair, it perched on a hill overlooking a pond with Mt. Ascutney jutting up in the background — the best view in town. The hushed ambiance is one I will forever equate with a place where the dead rest.
The sloping hillside held fascinating secrets. From the dirt road, the cemetery appeared covered in verdant grass. Once through the rickety gate, that perspective changed. Upon closer inspection, the grass became densely packed moss that crept up onto the gravestones and fence posts and turned the ground spongy beneath our feet.
Wildflowers sprinkled the cemetery hither and yon where the moss wasn’t hogging the soil. Buttercups, purple or white clover, daisies, dandelions, violets, and the occasional patch of wild strawberries. Tiny bees buzzed and flitted from flower to flower, zipping past, yet paying us no mind. There were other creatures. Dragonflies, caterpillars and butterflies, and Red-spotted Newts (my favorite). Under the moss, things we could neither see nor fathom. The wind played…
