G is for GRAVEYARDS

I wouldn't be a frequent visitor to graveyards, though the frequency has probably increased over the years, but I'm not dying to go to one, if you see what I mean. The closest graveyard is about a quarter of a mile from our house, beside the local Presbyterian church. It's where the family members who share my surname are buried, in two different plots. In one grave are my most recent ancestors as far back as my great grandfather and his wife and as far forward as less than two years ago when mum was laid to rest beside her husband of over fifty years. Less than thirty yards away, in the part that was new not so many years ago, but has now only a dwindling number of spaces, a headstone records the passing of my uncle and only other close relative. It's a sobering thought that my name will one day be engraved on a piece of stone within this silent city. But this is not a sad reflection on lost relatives, but a chance to muse on the strange and yet interesting fact that graveyards are, despite their inhabitants, wonderful examples of living history on all our doorsteps.

I've always been intrigued by the 'stories behind the headstones', those inscriptions that state the facts but leave the rest to the imagination. Stories of babies and children, of young men who went to war, of whole families reunited beneath the soil, of deaths during the famine years, of those who reached their century on earth and of others who just missed it, of names no longer in the area, of victims of violence in the last forty years in our country. Yes, every headstone has its own story to tell and though nobody tells it better than those who can no longer speak, it is often captivating to speculate.

One headstone in our graveyard bears the name of the deceased and three simple words, 'Poet and Preacher'. I never knew the man in question, though he was minister in the adjoining church before I entered the world, but my dad and he were friends and lived just across the hedge from each other. However such a simple inscription hides the very varied abilities and story of the man they called WR Rodgers. It's a story that even the most imaginative mind would fail to conjure up about the poet and preacher. He was minister in the church for just over ten years from the mid thirties but by this time had already completed an English degree at Queen's and passed though theological college. After his resignation from the ministry, he wrote in Oxford, worked as a script writer and producer for the BBC, remarried after the death of his first wife and then lectured and wrote in two different colleges in California. He published volumes of poetry and prose, was a member of various literary groups and Arts councils, wrote many letters and received funding from a variety of sources such was his standing amongst literary critics. Not bad for a poet and a preacher!

In our village graveyard, stands one wall of the original church, a testimony to an earlier age when community relationships between the two main religious groups was no less tense. Close by stands the gravestone that bears the name Cope, a lasting memory to a time when this family, from England, lived in the two big houses on the Manor estate and provided work for many of the locals, even ensuring survival for some during the famine. Their legacy includes the local primary school, occupying its third building but still bearing their name and the absence of any public houses in the village!

As I walk through some of the local graveyards, on what I now call 'official business' of attending a funeral, I am struck by the number of names to which I can now put faces and memories. For them, I don't need to conjure up any imaginative story, for I lived through part of theirs already. Ah the joys of growing older!

Anyway, this whole journey makes me wonder what would be a fitting epitaph for each of us and whether someone else's opinion would accurately reflect our own private thoughts about the impression we had made. Like Enoch, would it read 'he walked with God', or like Peter 'upon this rock'. Maybe we will have 'the wisdom of Solomon', 'the patience of Job' or just the word 'christian'. For me the greatest inscription that could have been written on a gravestone would have been 'He is not here, He is risen', but it never was for the evidence was there for all to see.

Like I say, every gravestone tells a story. Time to start a new chapter?