My Life Reflected
We have all been at a cemetery at some time or another and walked through the rows of headstones. We look for the oldest gravesite or find the most expressive epitaphs. We are saddened by the graves of young children and bewilder by family plots where the years of death in some cases only days or months apart leave us with more questions than answers. With many cemeteries, new restrictions on above ground headstones our information has basically been reduced to date of birth and death and maybe a 10-12-word sentence as an epitaph. It is impossible for these two dates to reflect a person's lifetime on this earth. Who was this person? How did they die? Who did they love and who loved them? What were their dreams and what were their challenges. What lessons could they teach us about life?
On a business trip one year to Bangor, Maine I had several hours before my flight back home so I took a drive into the snowy rural area East of the city. I came across an old cemetery. I stopped and walked along the 100 or so gravesites. With the dates of most of the headstones I determined that this was a site that was started sometime in the 1700.
As I walked my eyes caught a glint of sunshine from a beautiful white marble headstone with the words “Our little Katharine has left us at the age of 14, May 17th 1734.
This headstone saddened me. I could feel the lost that these parents must of had endured. I was left with the wish of wanting to know why she died. Was it an illness or some tragic accident? What did she look like? Who were these grieving parents? What happy memories did they have to share of their little Katharine?
It was hard to garner much more information than she was born and died at a tender age of 14.
Not long after that business trip, my wife Margie died of complications from a brain tumor. It was a very short length of time from discovery to her death. It was exactly 40 days.
I was left with basically a hole in my heart and a young son of 7 years old.
After enduring all the normal issues of buying a casket, memorial services, and cemetery plot I was left with one of the most difficult parts of the process, writing out what I wanted on her headstone.
It sounds simple at first but I was faced with the task of putting into words one line that would reflect her life. I struggled for months trying to write an appropriate message for all whom in the future would come visit her place of rest. As we all know headstones weather far better than our memories and their messages transcend time in some cases for hundreds of years. What do you write that will tell some distant visitor that there was more to Margie than just when she was born and when she died. Margie had a life in-between those two dates. I found that it is impossible to write anything that would reflect her sweet and kind soul. What one sentence could accurately abbreviate a lifetime and what influences Margie had on many people how could I possibly abbreviate how much she was loved and how sad our lives are now that she is gone? No matter if I used up every square inch of the 18”x 28” slab of granite of headstone would I have enough space to reflect her 47 years of life. And how she died with the most astounding sense of dignity and grace I have ever witnessed. To tell the stories of her seeing her departed Father in the room shortly before her death.
I was troubled and very frustrated that I could not seem to come up with the right words that felt right. I continued to procrastinate getting this last detail of finalizing her burial.
On a visit to Margie's gravesite I was sitting alongside her grave saddened and upset with myself for not giving her at least the basic dignity of having a marked grave. I looked around her site and noticed the name of the person next to her site. I again asked who was this person. What was their life like? I asked myself if there were only a way that I could efficiently research information on-line that would tell me this person's life story. Their hopes, dreams and accomplishments. Their adversities and challenges. If there were such a site I could leave the kind of information about Margie that could be one day passed down as a legacy to her grandchildren or great grandchildren. It was this thought that I came up with the idea of creating a website giving people who like myself a place where they can either share the stories of loved ones that have passed or create their own reflections on life to be passed down for generations.
March 23 1958 - May 30 2006
So it is in honor of Margie that I dedicate this site. And because of her I hope you will find a place where you can honor those loved ones so painfully missed or you can leave words of advice and reflections of your own life that can be shared for a very very long time.