I will take my children to the graveyard.
I will let them run through tombstones like shards of rain, beating into the earth between cracks in the sidewalk, yelling and laughing and hiding behind big stones. I will tell stories, snuggling our toes into the grass curled over the Smiths and the Wrights, and show them the woman who lived to be one-hundred. Seated on the tombstone benches we will grieve those who are dead, and rejoice for those who will never die-- who are alive for the first time, the longest time, forever. My children will grow strong; death shall not frighten them when they understand that the bones of those who have died salted the world they live in, and gave sweat to the groaning of this very good creation. And when they grow old enough, they will lay my bones beneath the ready earth and they will cry-- but they will also laugh, because they will know, as they did when they played hide-and-seek among old names, that death has no victory-- supposedly, it does not even have sting. Death clutches our lungs for just this one, wilting moment. ~Ruthie
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Open and Unafraid David O. Taylor O Pioneers! Willa Cather Archives
August 2020
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