Honoring Our Past Brothers
Thoughts inspired by an old tradition
Every year, for Memorial Day, my Lodge at Centralia marks the graves of every Mason buried in one of our cemeteries. I’ve been told that our Lodge has been doing this for over 100 years now.
It is a truly impressive display when completed, and I think a really tangible way for us to connect with and honor all of the Freemasons who have come before us.
But, it is also a massive job. A job that the Lodge can no longer do on its own. If not for the assistance given to us by Masons from elsewhere, and Masonic youth groups, we’d never be able to pull it off.
This year it took three days to put all of the markers in place, another day to remove them all, and due to loss and breakage, some new markers do need to be crafted each year.
I mention that just as a bit of a warning, in case another Lodge considers doing something similar. We find it to be extremely meaningful, but the amount of work it takes shouldn’t be underestimated.
I ended up going out on two days this year, and while spending those hours walking through the cemeteries, I had a lot of time to think.
I found my thoughts turned towards cemeteries themselves, and perhaps their changing status in our changing society.
My family has a fairly large plot full of Bailey’s in my hometown, and I remember, as a kid, going there with parents and grandparents to tend to the graves from time to time. Melinda’s family did the same, as an adult I’d go with her grandmother to help tend the graves of her loved ones. We’ve continued to do that in the years since her grandmother passed.
But that seems to be dying now.
Walking through the cemeteries these past days, I see very, very few tended graves. Maybe one out of a thousand shows any evidence that anyone has visited.
I was fairly powerfully struck by the idea that the Masons remember, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the American Legion remember. It doesn’t seem like anyone else remembers. Or very few anyway.
Society is changing, we are much more mobile now than in generations past. I live hours away from the Bailey plot, but lots of people are a heck of a lot further than that from their roots.
It seems that we just don’t visit graves like people did in the past.
And honestly, I don’t know that to be a bad thing. I do believe that when we die the essential part of us re-ascends the ladder Jacob saw in this vision, returning to the place from whence it came. As such, I don’t really believe that the person who was is in the grave containing his or her remains.
Rather it is our memories that reside there, but they don’t only reside there, and it is perhaps better that we remember the life more than the death.
But, I look at the headstones, and so many of them want to communicate something to those who see them. A display of wealth with size and luxury. A display of family in a large plot. A display of service or avocation through symbolism. A handful of words.
Who do these communicate too though, I wonder? It seems only the Mason and the Veteran walking past to set a marker or a flag.
In the past, I’d long assumed that I’d want a marker. Something solid to communicate that I was here. But, I’ve been doing this cemetery project for some years now, and I think that has led me to change my mind. I now think it would be better to just have my ashes scattered somewhere. What do I need to communicate after I’m gone? Who would I even be communicating with? Surely the essential parts of myself would not be there.
I am really proud that my Lodge does this, and I do find it to be a very meaningful thing to do. But, it has also, perhaps, shown me what is important, and what isn’t important after I leave this life.
I guess it is vanity, but I literally want to leave my mark on this earth. But you're right, fewer and fewer folks visit their ancestors and loved ones. Last year I invited my last remaining family, my brother and his wife, to go out to the local cemetery where the majority of our family is buried. The SIL refused, saying she had no desire to tromp around looking for graves. So I went myself.
I had spent a lot of time on the website www.findagrave.com looking for and notating my family gravesites. The website is crowdsourced, volunteers go to cemeteries and catalog each and every grave. From there, you can log into the website and collate the grave relationships. For example, this is my grandfather: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/98125492/lorenz-geiss . When you look at his page, you can see all the relations organized, parents, siblings, spouse, children, etc. When I first saw it, it was only partially done, I created all of the links and added missing listings, including my dad and brother, whose ashes were scattered and there is no grave marker. It's all free.
So, there are other ways to be remembered. Facebook, for example, allows family to designate your page as deceased, so it can be visited and not taken down. So family can visit it virtually and post memories if they want. I did that for my dad and brother.
So, even if you wish to be cremated and ashes scattered, there are more ways for you to live on, at least virtually.
MWPGM Bailey,
Thanks for the message about honoring our ancestors on Memorial Day. I called my brother in WV, about if he had yet been to the Cemetery where many of our ancestors are buried?
He had not, as he was leaving a Memorial Day Service where his "Highlanders Pipe & Drum Corps" performed. I told him I had played TAPS on one of my Bugles in a Cemetery where the named soldier is buried of The American Legion Dept of Florida "Arnold Vern Allen" Post 166.
After our Ceremony, we distributed Flags by the tombstones of Veterans. Many tombstones did also have Masonic Symbols inscribed. I asked my brother to consider adding a Masonic Tombstone for our father? Presently, there is only a US Army marker.
I sent a photo of a small Stone resembling the "Washington Monument", as our dad was WV Masonic Grand Lodge Grand Master 1968. Thanks for your essay.