by Joanne Wiklund
I spent time last Friday in the Cordova Cemetery. I reflected on the stones set there through the years. As a youth, every day I delivered the Dispatch newspaper to homes throughout the village. With 110 customers from the gas station to the Shamrock Inn, up on the church hill, through the quarry road, up on the hill from Third Avenue, I knew all the shortcuts. Never could manage a bike though, with that many papers. I picked them up at the post office, and left some there while I went to the gas station. Then dropped my bag off at Caroline Francis’ IGA store and hit those houses around there. Left my bag at home when I went down the street to the Shamrock Inn.
When I walk through the Cordova Cemetery now, I know so many names on the stones. Of course my family is there, people I went to school with, as well as a lot of my old customers from my paper route. My son and his family lived next to Zuma Cemetery for a while. We have immediate family there. One of my grandsons was uneasy about being so close to all those graves and stones. He shared it with me right after they moved next door to the cemetery, so I told him what I thought about it.
“You can be scared and talk about ghosts, but when I look at those stones, do you know what I see? I don’t see all those stones as a reminder of death. The stones were placed there by people who loved the person buried there. That makes the cemetery a field of love. You wouldn’t put a stone by someone you didn’t love.The stone is a reminder of how much you loved that person.” It satisfied him, and I got feedback that he’d shared that story with a friend that was uneasy about doing a sleepover with him so close to the cemetery.
Definition: Cemetery = a field of love
Revelation 1:18 ”I am He that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.”
Revelation: 4:11 “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power, for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”
Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of thing not seen, For by faith the elders obtained a good report. 6 “But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he that cometh to God must believe, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”
