Day 2 of the Eagle Project brought DH, myself, our son, and our daughter and then...no one...until around 10 AM, one lonely young scout came (I was told later that this was his very first service project). He admitted to me he was a little nervous working in a "graveyard" as it held some bad connotations for him. I can certainly relate. I remember as a young child when a family member died and we would go visit their grave site, we were admonished by the big kids "don't step on the grave! Don't step on the stone!" Not really sure that this was out of respect (we probably didn't think that cerebrally) but more emotionally i.e. the goblins and zombies are gonna get ya if you walk on their graves. But in any case, it gave me an opportunity to talk to him about giving people a special place to visit loved ones, and how this project will show people that someone cared enough to make it beautiful. Shortly after, my son's girlfriend came as well. She had been there the day before and this tiny little thing was a whirlwind! she had worked many long hours the day before, but came back and she is amazing. A very meticulous young woman, and so dedicated. Then lo and behold, a mom and daughter who had been there the day before, came back unexpectedly. Even though they could only stay for a little while, it blessed me they came back. Her son, a 6th grader and a Boy Scout couldn't make it that day, but his young sis, a 2nd grader, well, let me just say, her cheerfulness was infectious and kept us going. A dear friend texted me at 10:35 and asked how it was going. At that time, it was still 1 kid and us. He asked me were we going to keep going? Well, I figure, we had to...we have no weekends left otherwise! We just kept plugging away. I can't say I didn't want to give up. I was personally exhausted beyond all measure. I didn't want DH to do work, ok, still terrified of him over-doing and causing another "incident" (my how my vernacular is changing: I hate the "S" word (stroke). So anyway, just working on the stones one-at-a-time. Then I looked up as we were nearing the entrance..I think it was about 1 or 2. It looked as if the Cavalry had arrived! There was my brother, his wife, their two kids. Another Scout and his dad, my friend and his wife (who had texted me earlier and "heard" my cry), another Scout and his grandpa, another Scout...well, I did almost cry at that moment! Oh my goodness! Well, for two plus hours we scoured, raked, weeded, etc and got so much accomplished. Once again, I am indeed humbled that so many came to help. Keep in mind, we were supposed to be done at 4pm and naturally, people had to start leaving for other obligations. We still weren't done, and we just felt we had to go on, thinking: just a little more. Even though I do not think that the ranger expected us to complete the entire cemetery site, it just felt wrong to leave it unfinished. So here we were, once again, four of us, scrubbing stones. Plus we had worked from the back up towards the front, and DH pointed out that the ranger would see these unfinished ones the first time he came in, so onward and forward, we kept going.At the 5 o'clock mark, a young man and his son walked into the cemetery. I asked if he was there to visit a loved one and he said yes. As he headed towards a direction directly behind me, I realized I had just cleaned all the headstones in that family's compound. It gave me a great sense of joy and satisfaction when he expressed how much it meant to him. It was evident that family visited this particular site often as there were flowers and mementos of every kind, so it was sweet to get that reward of seeing a family member's joy that someone cared. It was approximately 5:30 when we felt we had completed the task of every single cleaning of every single monument and headstone and marker in the entire cemetery. I told my son he should get some last pictures and a count before we loaded up. He thought he would "guesstimate" around a hundred for his write up of the project. So, the statistician in me decided to physically count each one. As I am counting, I saw one we had forgotten, off by its lonely self. Now it, too, was newer and quite lovely. It was a standing marble type, but had moss and bird droppings all over the front. What made it so poignant, was he was quite a young man, and it had his picture on it, probably the only picture I saw. He was quite handsome and obviously loved by his family as evidenced by flowers and figurines. Obviously, we couldn't leave it undone! So I raced to the car and got out the water, brushes and rags and gave it a good cleaning. At 5:38 PDT, we were officially done. Final count? 165 headstones, markers, and monuments, restored to their former beauty. Well, almost: some of these stones were from the 1800's, we did the best we could...although some that had been gray/green and unreadable were white after cleaning and we could make out the words. I was going to let you see a before and after, but I would have to figure out which befores were which afters. Many are unrecognizable. The befores are so different! Here's one that was completely buried and looked like a piece of sidewalk before; here it is after.
At first I thought the hands clasping were signifying friendship (as a number of stones had that) but on a closer look (and scrubbing) I realized that the hand on the left was a woman's, with a feminine cuff and the one on the right was a man's hand with cufflink on the sleeve. The inscriptions reads:
Louis Pelletan
died
May 2, 1987
aged
48 years
a native of France
Dearest husband thou hast left me
and my loss I deeply feel
Tis the Lord that has bereft me
Of my husband I loved so well.
To the unknown wife, long gone and joining her beloved: he is remembered and cared for today on (almost) the 115th anniversary of his death.
This was more than just a service project, more than an Eagle project. This was a tender and loving gesture and a gift from this generation to ones long past. May you find eternal rest in this beautiful and sacred ground as our hearts join with your descendants to say : you are not forgotten. My humblest of thanks to all who participated. As my son writes his thank you notes, I want to add my own appreciation to all of you that helped. I know you sacrificed your time and energy of your very busy lives, and I just want to acknowledge how much we thank you.
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