Our Glorious Dead

Groveton Confederate Cemetery has two headstones. There are 266 soldiers buried here, but most of them were never identified. thats 264 families left wondering.

but from the standpoint of a resting place, what more could you ask for? These boys are here, now, among the fields and trees where they fought and died. And if not for the heavy-handed gate and the fenced area, this might well be another field, another lovely roadside picnic area. It clearly doesn't matter to us, after our death, whether we lie in a glorious mausoleum or in the unmarked, sun-dappled ground beneath a tree. Even the most lovingly placed and carefully inscribes tombstones eventually fall into disrepair, and rather than bittersweet reminders of a dearly adored one, they become sinister props to nightmares.

But the fact remains that the presence of a cemetery, of the stones themselves, provides us with a link, with a reminder of generations past, even if they aren't our own glorious dead. We are not the first to face struggles, to suffer, to contemplate death. It is, in many ways, a comfort to walk among the old headstones and know that you will not be the first to venture into the valley of the shadow, and to hope that you, too, will be lovingly remembered with a carefully placed stone, and possibly flowers, flags, trinkets. In that regard the unmarked graves of Groveton are far more horrifying than even the most run-down cemetery: here lie the unremembered, the lost and alone. How many more lie interred around us, the nameless deceased of the ages, gone now, and forgotten?