Outside the window of my writing desk, across the field in the distance, sits a standing grove of trees. Not long ago it was beautifully surrounded by a sloping grassy hill rolling down into a field that stretched out bearing alternate crops of corn and soybeans. Now the grove sits alone, the field practically leveled. Exposed compacted red clay lays ready for more concrete and asphalt of the impending neighborhood being constructed. For years I’ve enjoyed looking out across that field. Even hiking up to the sacred feeling space sometimes. Sometimes the dog was with me. Sometimes it was just me. But curiously, it never felt like just me.
Once everything was cleared, the grove of trees was left standing. I wondered why. Uncle Joe, the family’s approaching centenarian and patriarch of this land said there was a graveyard up there. At least it was when he was a boy. I found it interesting because as many times as I’d been up on that hill, I never saw a graveyard. He said it was there but had never seen any burials there in his life time. We are talking about nearly an entire century here. Spurred on by my curiosity, I set out to explore the grove again minus the beautiful rising slope of thick grass on which we had fantasized of building our house. The area was cordoned off with an orange netted fence that both the dog and I easily hopped over. Finally on the northwest side, in the thick of the grove, I saw the first tombstone. It stretched out prone among the trees, lying there like a sleeping behemoth. There there were others. Some in pristine condition, others cracked and being swallowed up by earth but present as a reminder of lives once lived.
I could make out a name or two. Wondered who they were. Where had they lived? What did they do? Had they left some mark that impacted the now? Who were their descendants? All I could physically see were stones. The cold hard monuments stood in contrast to the warmth of lives once lived. What had been their concerns, their worries, their fears, or challenges. None of that mattered to them now. As I stood there, mortality tapped upon my intellect and took me forward a hundred years or so and there it was; someone looking upon the markers of those of us present now and asking some of those same questions.
Suddenly I had a shift in perspective. This too shall pass has become a common bumper sticker proverb. However, its profundity is no less relevant. What are we doing with the time we’ve been granted her on this plain? Are we using precious energy and limited time on things that won’t matter in the long run..or short? How much time do we waste on worry and fretting; time that could be invested in living while we yet live? All of those material things that we slave for and give life to will belong to someone else in a hundred years or so. We will be just a memory. Where are you planting those seeds that will continue to birth the power of your living beyond your lifetime? What legacy are you building by living in all the corners of this thing call life?
One day soon. That grove of trees will be surrounded by the voices of children playing, crying laughing, heading to and from school. It will be surrounded by people making love, more children, marrying, divorcing, working, and buying. Some could even call it living the American dream and then… that too shall pass. All we have is the now. It belongs to us in the present. Let us go all out and do what we can and will with want we have with the most precious gift of all because one day, we’ll have to give it all back.
Notes of A Native Son 