remembering

Pole Bridge Baptist Cemetery

We went on an adventure this week to a small cemetery near our home in Alabama.  We would have never known  it was there except for a small sign someone put up last year at the road's beginning.  I've wanted to go there ever since the sign appeared.

The road was clay and rock and not too difficult to navigate even though the hills and curves were a little challenging at times. There were several roads off the main one that led up into the hills, each one gated and locked.  We passed no other cars and saw no other people as we traversed upward and onward to the goal, Pole Bridge Baptist Church Cemetery.

The cemetery is up on the side of a small hill and has many graves and markers for such a small place.  Weeds and wildflowers have nearly taken over the place and the tops of the headstones and markers are visible through the tall greenery.  There are a few modern headstones and monuments as well as many field rocks and  homemade concrete markers that, when they are legible, give a name and dates of birth and death.  A few of the graves have collapsed in on themselves but mostly, they seem intact.

As I walked up the hill, reading headstones and markers I was overcome with emotion.  Maybe it was because of the seemingly hidden place of the graveyard, perhaps it was the state of disrepair that had befallen these memorials, or maybe it was because these people, mothers, fathers, infants, who had lived and died in our small community seemed forgotten by their whole world.  Each field stone, each marker, represented a life that lived, was loved, died and now all remnants of this life had nearly disappeared.

Daniel Hagan who was born in 1791 and died in 1875 at 84 years old, was a veteran of the War of 1812 as part of Alexander's Battalion of Rifleman Georgia Millitia.  Amazing!  I'm sure he had great stories to tell his children and grandchildren.

I thought of the baby girl, Vicie Viola Bryant, who was stillborn or died the same day she was born in March 1912.  How heartbroken her mother and father must have been.  All their hopes and dreams for their child, dashed.  Her life was over before it got started.

Little Susie Mae Webber was born March 25, 1912 and died October 24, 1914, was 2 1/2 when she died.  Was it illness or an untimely accident that took her life so soon?  I imagine Susie Mae's mother worked hard to take care of her family, perhaps working on the farm or in the garden each spring and fall.  She prepared food for the winter by canning or drying it for the family even when she was pregnant.  She cooked and sewed and took care of her husband and other children despite the sheer fatigue she endured.  I'm sure she was proud of her family, proud of her little girl.  Maybe Susie got sick and just couldn't get over it, or perhaps she was injured on their farm.  She might have been bitten by a snake or drowned in a pond.  The list of dangers in the country is long.

Mr Hagan will be remembered in military records and by his family proud of his service those many years ago, but what of the children who died so young, but what about the mothers who underwent severe hardship back in 1912 to birth their babies only to have them die before they could live even one day, like precious Vicie?  Who will remember these little girls and their hard working mothers and fathers when their only memorial is overgrown and forgotten on a small, lonely hill back in the woods of Alabama?

"Before I shaped you in the womb, I knew all about you.  Before you saw the light of day, I had holy plans for you..."  Jerimiah 1:5  The Lord knew all the people buried in Pole Bridge Baptist Cemetery even before they were born and He surely knew them all their lives, whether it was 84 fully lived years or 2 1/2 years or even a day.  We are, each one of us, important to him, and He remembers.

Now that I've found their final resting place, I will remember, too.  I will visit their graves when I have opportunity.  I will clean around their headstones and put wildflowers on their graves and I will remember the people who lived in this beautiful Talladega forest trying to live their lives the best they knew how.

Suz