Newscoma

It’s easy to find joy in the grasp of what appears to be dying. You have to look, but it’s there. I return to the ghosts of my childhood which Squirrel Queen and I shared with Aunt B. on Saturday, as we not only went to cemeteries but to towns with empty building where once busy streets filled with inhabitants have lost some of the vibrancy that I remember as a child.

There were lessons, not for B. necessarily, but for myself of the death of culture and how subcultures scrap and fight to survive. It’s odd to me that the underlying universe that isn’t normally seen thrives by sheer determination as other bits erode under the pressure of time.

The courthouse in Hickman, KY is one of the most beautiful buildings you will ever see. It sets on a bluff over the Mississippi River in a town that has lost so much hope over recent years. A retaining wall protects what’s left of the town. We hear of ghost towns, and although Hickman isn’t one yet, you can’t help but wonder what is next as you look across the murky water into Missouri. The heat was blistering Saturday and the large acreage of trees over the slow-moving river was a summer haze, blurred our vision.

The heat and the silence reminded me of our own mortality.

Three more friends and acquaintance are unemployed as of Friday when my sister called me with the news. I can’t shake the feeling that we are mourning something bigger than ourselves and I don’t have any answers. When I saw Hickman the next day, I found a lump in my stomach that remains with me two days later.

Quite fittingly, we visited cemeteries and I believe it’s all connected. At Camp Beauregard, we saw a mass grave with one marker. 1,200 soldiers who died from disease and neglect are recognized with one large monument, but it’s the smaller graves that gather your psyche. We believe those spirits protect the dead. We visited the cemetery where my mother is buried where bones have been covered with the dirt of the land for two centuries. I didn’t share her grave with those with me. It’s still private for me.

I saw the names of the ancestors of the  townspeople I still know.

As B. wrote:

We had spent all day touring dead towns and cemeteries.

What’cha gonna do when the State runs dry? Drive back roads watchin’ small towns die.  Honey, pretty baby mine.

And there was the river, that muddy god who lays in between the middle of the country so easy you can almost imagine him sliding his tributaries up Illinois’ shirt and singing softly, “… them men don’t know but the little girls understand.”

I wonder what will become of us and I’m pleased that a few bloggers have decided to visit our little patch in the world and are seeing for themselves that the words I continually write here have weight. If you see it for yourself, then you will know what we do.

I’m speaking of two things now. Our younger people, who decided to stay here when so many left, are now faced with the dilemma that we might not be able to stay. That we will trek to places that have a more solid economy that can support us and our families. What once sustained us with a deep well filled with possibility has now run dry for so many. We look to the past to see the future.

As I said, there are no answers because dead men and women tell no tales.

I wonder if we will be all right. In some ways, it’s beginning to look bleak.

So we visit young dead soldiers who fought in the war who have been gone a 150 years and realize that bleak is generational. We visited cemeteries that hold lynching victims from a time long ago. We saw the lines drawn over what was and what is.

And death is a natural part of life but loss is more than the calling of the bones. Death can wear many coats.

I wait to see what will happen next.