Grave in the Forest

These things we can surmise, given the information available to us:


   When she was in diapers, the nation was as well: she was born at
   the end of the 1700s.

   Maybe her family had money, and some land.

   Maybe they raised corn, or horses, or tobacco.

   Maybe her family was only a generation or two removed from
   England. Maybe it was Germany

   Maybe she was taught to read, taught her numbers, taught to
   write. Maybe she was not.

   Maybe from the kitchen window she could gaze over the vegetables
   growing in the kitchen garden she tended for her family: green
   peppers, tomatoes, dill weed

   Let's be honest: maybe she owned a slave. Maybe more than one. Perhaps
   she was cruel to them, perhaps she was grateful for their help.

   Maybe she hauled water from the well to do the cooking, the washing,
   the cleaning, her strong hands pulling at the sisal rope that
   descended into cool depths

   Maybe she boiled it on a fire nourished by wood cut from forests
   around the edge of their North Carolina property

   Maybe her husband considered this land part of the New Hope, their
   previous investments rendered worthless by agents who sold properties
   many times over, but whose connections to the king protected them from
   recrimination

   Maybe she rejoiced at the stew pot whistling over the flames, the
   linens folded properly in wooden drawers that slid smoothly, the first
   steps of a young calf, the young corn turning its head to the sun, the
   gurgle of the cool creek waters below

Of this we can be sure:
    
   She died in her 70s, a long life in those days when disease and
   ill-fortune were never sated

   Children, nieces, nephews buried her at the edge of their property,
   far from the family house, on the shoulder of a little hill that
   overlooked the creek and the forests beyond it.

   Over time, that hillside grew wooded. Eventually, a wealthy
   industrialist purchased the land in an act of philanthropy. The
   university came to own it, manage it, and protect it.

   The creek never stopped flowing, and gurgles over its rocky bed to
   this day. But the wind now sings through the boughs of trees on all
   sides of her grave.


A hundred eighty-or-so years later, a man now entering the second
phase of his life, coming to accept that his days on earth will not be
limitless, stumbled upon this grave-in-the-woodlands, so improbably
located in the middle of a forest.

And he thought to himself, "This is a better final resting place than
most."

"I should be so lucky."