Who was Mary?

What a brilliant summer's weekend! The bright sunshine covered the hills and valleys to create the perfect day for some leisurely photo opportunities. Grandma, mom and Aunt Cathy stopped by to visit my house on Saturday. After a brief stay, we all decided to go to a large, local antique mall. Luckily, I had finished my most pressing chores for the day - the lawn was mowed, steps and patio swept, flowers watered, and laundry was tumbling in the dryer. It had been a while since I had been on an antique excursion. It was really my Aunt Cathy who was itching to go there since she had never been to this particular place. When we walked in, I was overcome with a feeling of nostalgia. So many things from long ago were displayed in cases that went on and on and on. Many things were unfamiliar to me, of course, but every now and then Grandma or one of the others would let out a little gasp or shriek of delight. Things once remembered were being recollected anew. It was a wonderful step back in time that engulfed us and time began to quickly slip away. We had to abandon the many remaining, unexplored caverns of antiquity for the time being. There was more to do.

Our historical emphasis continued as we drove on towards an old Presbyterian church in the courtryside. Nobody worships there today. The congregation dissolved in the early 1900's around the time of World War I. The church's founding had occurred over 100 years before that in the late 1700's by pioneers. Indian raids in the early years left the church devastated. It was rebuilt as a log structure and then rebuilt again around 1846 as the brick structure it remains today. In recent years it has been restored and is on the National Registry of Historical Places.

The church cemetery was itself a gem of historical brilliance. Many of the tombstones were simply too eroded to identify the names they bore. No doubt they were ancient. Some of the inscriptions, though, were decipherable. There were people buried there that were probably part of the original congregation in the 1700's. At least one man (there were probably more) was born prior to the American Revolution when Pennsylvania was still a British colony. Another man was a veteran of the War of 1812. Then we came to a stone that was toppled over and probably had been for ages. As the afternoon sunlight flooded the grassy space, I bent down to brush away the debris covering the name on the stone. It belonged to "Mary" who had died in the late 1700's. There was suddenly a solemn sadness that pervaded me. I wondered who Mary had been. "What had this area that I'm so familiar with been like in her day?", I wondered. She had been alive just like I am now living, breathing, and going about life. I'm sure she never imagined that someday, more than 200 years in the future, far beyond the events of the American Revolution, some guy would walk by her place of eternal rest, bend down to brush away the dirt and wonder, "Who was Mary?"