On Moonfest, and Prayers for the Dead

Due to the weather, I was forced to postpone my cemetery visit from yesterday to today. It was worth the wait.

The nearest accessible cemetery is in Brattleboro, Vermont, on top of a hill overlooking the Connecticut River. The cemetery has been there since at least 1830 (and most likely earlier - that was just the earliest date I could clearly read off a marker), with graves that cover an area of at least ten acres on top of the hill, and running down the slope facing the river for at least three tiers.

Some of the history represented there, just in the names I was able to decipher, shows how much we miss when we don't pay attention to our dead. For instance, I had never known about the Steamboat Greenfield explosion of May 18, 1840, until I saw the marker for Mr. Wood, the boat's engineer. I found entire families laid to rest together, some sharing a single marker for all of them, some with individual markers, some with a combination: a family monument, with a smaller stone giving name and date that showed where each member was within the family plot. I also found many people buried alone, without any relatives or loved ones nearby.

Saddest of all, though, were the stones that had uprooted, broken off, or simply fallen off their bases, and were simply laying there, some of them long enough that grass had partially grown over them. The city doesn't care enough about the graves to reset the stones - all that matters is ensuring that the lawn mower can travel between them. In fact, the person I encountered who had driven an hour to view the stones cared more about them than the city seems to care, and he was viewing them as a tourist, not as one of the Silent Shroud would. Regardless, the state of the cemetery made it clear that Kelemvor's teachings are needed, as the whole place gave off an aura of being cared for in the most superficial way possible.

That pretty much covers my initial impressions, so the rest of this post will hopefully be more uplifting.

Once I had finished walking the cemetery and noting the names and dates I could decipher, and once I had traced the family connections I was able to find in those that were there, I trusted Kelemvor to guide me to the spot that would allow me to bless as much of the cemetery in one go as I could. That, He did. The spot was an intersection of three drives, and right in the middle of the intersection, in a little raised triangle of ground where the three drives came together, was a piece of granite that had been placed on its side, like a small altar. It was obvious that this was where He wanted me to pray.

While I was praying, the sadness I felt, coming from all those abandoned and unremembered graves, wasn't overwhelming - it was, rather, tempered by a sense of resignation, as if it was expected that the living would forget the dead. At the same time, there was a sense of peace that came over the cemetery, as if a simple blessing was enough to ease the passing of those who hadn't gone yet.

How many were still there? I don't know. What I do know is that, for the Church of Kelemvor's first Feast of the Moon, the result was a greater connection with local history, and a greater sense of peace in one cemetery, at least. It's a start. I continue to pray that it grows until we can accomplish the goal of the church: that no one dies alone.