Raised by the graves.

 I spent a good chunk of the day helping Momma clear out Bean Cemetary. It's an old, old cemetery up in the hills that hasn't been kept up. The current owner is letting us go in and clean it out, mainly because some of my grandfather's people are buried there.

 Frankly, outside of Peaceful Valley, I really don't care one way or another about cemeteries. There's some off-putting about the whole concept of "eternal rest" to me. The tombstone, the coffin, the whole nine yards. I'm dead, I don't care one way or another. If Momma's still around, I tell my brother, do what makes her happy. If she's not, do what's easiest on you.

 But the ones around here are never-ending sources of fascination. Back before the Civil War, the little community I live in was one of if not the biggest in Itawamba County. Had the railroad come on this side of the river rather than Fulton's, my life would have been slightly but significantly different. Y'all really don't grok how country I am and my roots are.

 There are a number of graveyards around here, most of them date back to the 1850s and most of them have been closed for decades. My father's buried in Bourland Cemetary and I've got a plot there for when I go. I don't think I've been back since I moved back home unless Momma needed me for something. I really can't deal with my father's grave still.

 This area's mostly forest and mostly owned by Weyerhauser, the lumber company. But back in the 1800s, communities would pop up here and there, five miles from each other but might as well be a world away. A landing on the Tombigbee would start doing business, bring in goods and send out products from the farm, and the communities would drift that away. Another landing would set up further up the river and the communities would shift again.

 Nothing's left of these little villages but the cemeteries. The oldest one at Bean is in the 1850s and the last one in 1987, which comes twenty years after the spouse had already been planted. I find these things endlessly fascinating. For every person that got their three-score-and-ten are infant burials. Wives who died in childbirth, so a husband might be flanked by the first and second.

 A lot of young people, and by young I mean 20s and 30s. A cut thumb might lead to gangrene or a case of diarrhea might strike you down. More people could play instruments then because if you wanted music you had to make it yourself. Most folks could read and write and do their numbers, but an eighth-grade education was probably as good as you'd ever get. Everyone had a Bible but probably no other books.

 As I said, my grandfather's grandfather's people came from that part of the Valley but his grandmother came from pretty much where I am now, so that's where we wound up. That branch anyway. Indeed, that aforementioned ancestor, John Anderson Bean, lived and died on the very hill I sit to watch the world go by today.

 30 years ago, Weyerhauser planted a bunch of softwood trees, and all that's grown up now. I barely recognize it when I used to know every inch of those muddy backroads. It's like coming to a whole new world that's just occasionally familiar, like returning from a trip to the past only to find the present has changed because you stepped on a butterfly or something. The world has Unfolded and I have to find my way around it again.

 We're basically cleaning this graveyard out for no other reason than it makes Momma happy. That's a good enough reason for me to do anything. She's big on family history and our links to the past. Every time she gets a chance to preserve it, she does so. She's outlived most of her life and this brings her some peace at the end of her three-score-and-ten.

 Again, that's as good enough a reason for me.