Graves of the Forgotten
September 25th, 2009


The twisted grass runs wild in a field of green spotted here and there with
faded flowers and cold brown metal stands.  It is a graveyard; a cemetery.
This portion of the cemetery is on the margin of what anyone would classify
as a typical cemetery.  But, clearly this area where the graves of the
forgotten can be found is different.


Gerry and I drove to find the grave of our dear departed friend, L.D.
White.  (see Ode to LD from our archives on this site)  I drove right to the
spot.  How could I have forgotten the spot?  I couldn’t.  This place will
move you in that way.


There is only the obligatory funeral home marker from two years ago that
designates the spot where our dear LD’s body was laid to rest.  The mower
had deposited a measure of grass over the marker itself, but you could still
see LD’s name on the white faded paper.  There are hardly any tombstones out
here on the margins.  Those are back where the ‘other’ people are buried. 
Other folks have monuments of granite and marble standing against the years
in perpetuity announcing the body that lies beneath.


A short distance from LD’s grave I found one of the brown metal markers
flattened by a mower, no longer in the ground, uprooted and damaged beyond
repair.  Will that happen to LD one day?  How many graves already have no
markers - no sign that whoever is in the ground ever existed.  I viewed
pieces of faded flowers destroyed by the blades of a mower left tattered and
littered about the ground.  They were meant for beauty, but beauty had long
since left them and now treated as refuse they lay in the field of the
forgotten representative of those who ’sleep’ beneath.


We spied a patch of fresh earth, not from a single grave, but what looked to
be a large section.  The rains had pounded out the fresh earth, markers,
flowers and other memorial items.  In spots the earthen sides of the
graves were exposed.  They continue to erode away.


At the far end of the field is a heap of brush and trash.  It is just as
well.  I don’t think anyone is going to complain.


This place I call the ‘graves of the forgotten’ is nothing more than an
extension of how some people viewed these souls while they were above
ground.  They didn’t exist then, so if LD and his like have no designation
of where they are in the ground, what does it matter?  They lived a life on
the margins of society and now they are dead in the margins of a cemetery
reflecting the same caste system they left behind.


I do find solace in my sadness.  Though we may cast these aside in unmarked
graves, there is a Creator God who knows each by name.  LD taught me much
about selfless service and love.  There were many nights he gave his
sandwich away to someone who was late and went hungry himself - by choice.
His choice was to serve his fellow man in the love and grace of Christ and
even though his grave is nearly unmarked now, L.D. White is not an unmarked
soul to an ever-loving Father who knew him.  The tragedy is not the graves
of the forgotten but the everyday lives of those who are still living in our
midst.  They are out there still in the margins, but there nonetheless.


Will you take the time to get to know one of these souls?  Will you show
them that someone cares and loves them?


In many ways the mission of the JSM is that simple.  We make sure those in
the margins know of a God who loves them so much that he became like them.


"Yet he (a healed man) went out and began to proclaim it (the healing)
widely and to spread the news, with the result being Jesus could no longer
enter a town openly.  But He was out in deserted places…"  Mark 1:45 HCSB


Jesus knew what it was like to live in the margins.  Help us spread His
love, grace and truth to those who live in those margins now.


-m