Our Deep-Seated Need To Be Remembered

This is only one small section of some 80 acres of cemetery in Beckley, WV.

"Every headstone, every book, every sculpture, every song, every building, every award, are all just the same thing... the individual crying, 'I was here.' And yet everyone of us, given the passage of enough time, is forgotten." 

- cartoonist Stephan Pastis, in Pearls Before Swine 12/12/16

To celebrate our 53rd wedding anniversary, Alma Jean and I spent some time in Beckley, WV, this past week visiting the Tamarack arts and crafts center, the New River Bridge Visitors Center and other sites in this scenic area of West Virginia.

But we almost missed something nearly as amazing right next to the EconoLodge on Harper Road where we were staying, the historic Sunset Memorial Park.

I'm always intrigued by cemeteries, so I decided this would be a great place to walk for some daily exercise, but I was totally unprepared for what I saw when I crested the first hill on the property. Before me was over a half mile of seemingly endless cemetery stones and mausoleums of every size, shape and design, some marking burials of over 200 years ago. 

I was told that over 19,000 people are buried there from all over Raleigh County and the surrounding area, a larger number than those currently living in Beckley itself.

Walking in that vast area of memorial stones reminded me of how all of us want to somehow leave some footprints, some markers of our journey here on earth. As humans, it is not only death itself that we want to avoid or delay, but we fervently wish not be forgotten after we are gone.

My faith and hope tell me that no good life, no good deed, no good person will ever be lost forever, and will live on in ways more significant than can be captured on any gravestone.