Blessed are the Dead…

A headstone with an interesting surprise

Take a very close look at the headstone. Then look again. I don’t tour graveyards but on a recent weekend craft fair trip, my booth sat directly across from a centuries old cemetery. So I spent time between people shopping looking at the markers.

Many stood as testaments to the love and memories of people who had lived and died long before any of us walking today because citizens of the earth.

Imagine that one day your life will have mattered so much to someone that they commission an obelisk or ivory angel to your everlasting memory. Other headstones told different stories — worn inscriptions, stones beached by decades of sunlight and battering by rain. Even those told stories that the grave’s inhabitant had once held a place of love and honor to someone.

Even the headstone in the photo above spoke volumes about love and loss. And it left an enduring mystery. Now look really hard again. I asked the members of the church that owned the graveyard. They had never noticed this headstone — and one of the folks I spoke with was on the church’s cemetery committee!

Did you see it? While Susan E. Finnall’s birth date — September 14, 1869 is listed, she has no date of death! I did a quick search on several genealogy databases and found her birthday, the date of her marriage and the birth of her children. But none listed a date of death!

The epitaph reached, “Blessed are the dead who lie in the Lord.”

Maybe they should add, ‘Except for Susan Finnall, who may be still be on earth.”