by Robert Dixon

Created on: January 08, 2009

Southern families rely strongly upon a sense of place. It is the connection to a people, a time, and setting that brings a modicum of character to the individual. Yet southerners realize that individuality can come only if the person belongs to a greater community and attempts to understand that community. Understanding the inter-connectivity of relatives of one's neighbors allows the individual to draw comparisons to characteristics unique to different families. It is in that sense of place the families blend one to another through marriage. Each new generation takes those blended pieces of psychology and physiology from the last, and, in turn, passes down to the next those things good and bad. The same happens with the family history. It is a blend of unwritten stories with additions and detractions as the teller sees fit. The characters and stories from the past come alive as the families gather to celebrate the birth, rejoice at the weddings, and grieve with death.

Those matters of life and death become a continuum, because it is impossible to look at the future without looking at the past. It is the matter of the heart that when a grandfather is hugged that the grandson dreams of a time when he receives a grandchild's touch. When that first grandchild comes, grandpa is remembered. The memories flow from the past, present, and future when a family comes together. Rarely do we take time to turn these memories into the stories of hope and loss that each family has known.

Too often, families come together in a cemetery, walk among the graves, and tell children and grandchildren small stories or anecdotes of those laid silent. Each walk through the cemetery brings more stories to different children and grandchildren. Cemeteries mark time in a way that calendars cannot match. Calendars tend to make us make plans into some future. The dates in a cemetery make us stop, reflect, and remember a story. To walk among the memories of those I loved and those I sometimes vaguely remember, I see faces and remember specific events associated with those faces that made me or changed me in some distinct way. My heart still beats the blood of those whose spirits have long since passed from this world and whose empty shells stretch out beneath the granite and marble, but each grave carries stories that need to flow to the next generation as much as the family's bloodline..

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