CEMETERIES

Cemeteries have always been a part of my life. I grew up in rural Texas in a home with the somewhat unusual designation as a “teacherage”. It is the counterpart to a “parsonage”. My father was a teacher minister serving a Lutheran congregation and school, so we lived in the teacherage. The church properties were all in a row: the parochial school, the parsonage, the barns, the teacherage and the cemetery. The graves, the tombstones, the arched entry gateway were all just next door. Whenever a member of that rural parish died my father went to the church and tolled the bell. Within hours the gravediggers were there. Soon the funeral home people came with their tent, folding chairs and artificial green grass. From infancy I had attended every funeral and when I was in grade school we sang at the funeral services. We marched by the casket, looked at the corpse and paid our last respects. Then the bell again tolled our walk to the cemetery. After the committal ceremony I would stay and watch the dirt and stones go back into the grave, covering the casket.

I might walk along the row of tombstones. I would always pause at the small marker noting my cousin Ben who died in infancy. Through the years the number of my relatives buried there grew: grandparents, uncles, aunts, dad and mom and then brothers-in-law. It is a good place to visit, to reflect, to cry, to smile, to anticipate.

The Christian Cemetery in Kowloon Hong Kong is very different. It goes up a very steep hill. There is no vegetation. Funerals there use no artificial grass to soften the realities. The first time I climbed that steep hill (following four Chinese coolies carrying the coffin suspended from bamboo poles across their shoulders), I was assisting Dorothy Gehring. We were laying her husband Ralph to rest. Ralph had visited Hong Kong while in the US Navy. After discharge and getting a business degree he wanted to return as the church’s business manager. First he served in Japan. Then he joined us in Hong Kong. He was great. His wife and two kids were wonderful friends.

For reasons to be talked about in a different blog I was the only Lutheran missionary to ever be admitted into membership into the Royal Hong Kong Golf Club. Guest passes for local friends were extremely difficult to obtain. But I managed to host Ralph. Even as we were returning home that day he said he felt inordinately weak. Before long he was in the hospital. Very early the Dr. made the surprising diagnosis. He had polio. Within 72 hours he had died. It was then that we learned that before he left Japan to move to Hong Kong he and his family had gone to get polio shots. He was told that the supply at the time was very limited. Some children were waiting in line. “Oh, by all means, immunize them first “ was his immediate response. His wife and children received the vaccine. He never got his. And now we were taking his body for a final rest in Kowloon Christian Cemetery - and ever since then it is for a me a sacred place, a place to remember a gentle, giving colleague named Ralph.

Not long after Ralph’s burial I was in a very different cemetery. It was lush in greenery. Impeccably well-manicured landscape. Spectacular vistas in all directions. And 33,230 plain small white crosses. I was in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in the extinct volcano now called the Punch Bowl in Hawaii. I stood in silence for a very long time. All those under the sod at my feet had given their lives and in that action made my life choices possible. The day before my standing there at the Punch Bowl and after an absence from the USA for five full years I had proudly and gratefully presented my USA Passport at USA Customs. I was again enjoyed the privileges of a citizen in my own free country. Without the sacrifice of those now lying there it is most likely that I would not have been standing on the soil of the United States of America. And so I bowed in gratitude and in petition that the cost of my freedom would never again have to be paid as it had been by those among whose grassy beds I was now standing.