Deep thoughts with Teneisha

Today I decided to take my lunch to the memorial park/cemetery that I had heard about near by. I figured the grass would be nice and there might be some nice quiet spots to sit. So I pull into this huge park and I’m super excited because there’s a little pond with ducks and benches next to a pretty big white building. So I park and get down there, find a nice shady spot to sit and then as I start eating I realize that the pretty white building is a giant mausoleum…The pull out drawer / locker type holding hundreds (or more) bodies…I cant help but notice the much smaller drawers scattered throughout which I assumed to mean that they were children.



While eating, I come to the conclusion that cemeteries and burial in general is such a strange thing. To keep and cherish a lifeless body when the body had little to nothing to do with the reason you loved that person is a strange tradition. Even stranger to me is that we keep the people we love in boxes, in the ground or a wall…and those boxes, or stones or plaques become a representation of them…We don’t think of there bones rattling inside we think of this representation that we leave flowers beside.

After finishing my lunch I take a slower walk back to my car through the wet grass to look at some of the gravestones. I see a group of smaller gravestones, realize they are children’s and start reading them all. Then I turn around and realize that I’m standing in the middle of a children’s graveyard called “innocents”. I cannot help but feel a tad choked up as I notice some of the stones only list one date…They died the day that they were born…Possibly even more heartbreaking...are the children that died at 3 years old…little people with personalities and families that they love…

I come to a grave stone that has a big toy flower – left for her birthday on August 3rd I presume. The thing is…that this child would have been 30 years old. I don’t know why…but the thought of some parent after all these years…coming back time and time again…its just so human...

Innocents…