Grave words

I admit it. My husband and I like to spend time in old cemeteries for no reason other than to read tombstones. That’s right. We’re fascinated by epitaphs, and it’s commonly acknowledged that in towns along the Mississippi, families of the dearly departed penned theirs with remarkable style. I guess that’s one reason we weren’t the only ones in Natchez cruising burial plots a while back, although I was the only visitor with a laptop slung over my shoulder.

Occasionally, I would lean its screen against a wrought iron gate and type because I could not help myself, the history was so thick in those etchings. Funny how it’s the smallest, barely-est there-est etch—the dash between the years—that represents a lifespan. And it’s the dash that counts, right?

In Natchez, a hundred acres of epitaphs speak directly to the tragedies of life, many times unexpected and early. Employees trapped in a fire downtown. A boatman drowned in the river. A son said “to have never caused his parents grief but when he died.”

Other inscriptions proved America was the Promised Land to people the world over, including Prussia’s Conrad and Catherine Schwartz. A 10-foot marble monument in the Schwartz section of the cemetery attests to the milk and honey part.

And then there was the tombstone with only three words and two periods: “Louise. The Unfortunate.”

Boy, that one will give you pause. But even without inscribed dates, God knew all about unfortunate Louise. All the comings and goings and doings that made up her dash, had she had one.

Moving on to Vicksburg’s Cedar Hill Cemetery, one of the oldest in the United States, we spotted Latin on a couple of rows, Latin in the Bronte vein. Remember her words about Helen’s Brocklebridge Churchyard grave in Jane Eyre?

“A grey marble tablet marks the spot, inscribed with her name, and the word, ‘Resurgam.’”

Resurgam, as in I will rise again.

Nice, I thought to myself, fingering the curve of an R. Way to pack a punch in just eight letters. How come 19th-century Americans were so … so … what? Succinct? Clever? Theologically sound?

Again and again, I bent low and squinted like I was reading the Rosetta Stone. Again and again, I found crumbling headstones with something to say, and they didn’t mince words when they spoke. “Thy will be done.” “All is well.” “To die is gain.” “Absent, not dead.” “I know that my Redeemer lives.” “Bless the Lord, O my soul.”

It was more of the same at Port Gibson’s Wintergreen Cemetery, where a marker notes Aseneth Maria Spencer’s earthly remains and that she died “in the full assurance of Hope.” (Evidently they had different notions about what was worth capitalizing back then, too.) And no one could accuse Anne Jane Butler, 23, of holding to a fluffy confession: “She early professed her faith in Christ. Her end was perfect peace.”

Maybe young people just had a more serious bent back then. I suppose losing all your siblings during a yellow fever epidemic could do that. Even so, I’d like to ask Miss Mary E. Ross about her path to spiritual maturity, the kind that had her dying “in Christ and confidence” at age 19. A Q&A with her mother might be helpful as well. Too bad I missed them by close to 200 years.

For curiosity’s sake, I took a stroll through some more recent graves. Those headstones were glossier, but not many had the extra layer of information that an epitaph offers. One had a vase bearing Greek sorority letters, though.

But even when epitaphs are missing, rounded mounds of earth send a message whistling through the Spanish moss and leaning cedars that rings as honest as those troubling verses about our fleeting lives being as nothing before God. The chiseled dates aren’t silent either, making you do the math and get a true north on your own place in the big scheme of things.

Maybe—just maybe—that’s why we like spending time in old cemeteries reading grave words. But only because we know resurgam is among them.