Cemeteries are rich with the history and artwork of the communities they serve. Hubrises containing names and birth and death dates stretch towards the sky. Lonely angels are forever frozen in grief for the babes six feet below. Extravagant headstones and benches are arranged around family plots as if waiting for the living family to come and socialize with the dead. You can get an idea of the movers and shakers and who barely got by based on the shaped concrete adorning their graves. Cemeteries also give us a glimpse into our own future.

I visited the Old Baptist Cemetery in Hannibal, Missouri, in May 2022. It was founded in 1837 and made famous by Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The cemetery is no longer in use. The last person was laid to rest there in 1952. This was the last stop on a ghost tour of Hannibal. I love ghost tours, not because I think I will see ghosts or am looking for them, but rather because I enjoy seeing the town and hearing the history and lore of the area. Ghost tours meld history, sightseeing, and captivating stories into a very entertaining and educational time.

I chose to forgo the divining rods used to talk to the ghosts and wander the cemetery, reading the stones and snapping photos. Reading a cemetery stone acknowledges for a moment that the person existed and continues their memory in some form in my brain. The cemetery was in disarray. Entropy had run amok for decades. While a local group recently began caring for the cemetery, much repair work still needs to be completed.

There were more stones knocked over than standing. The Earth slowly consumed others as the ground shifted over the decades. You had to watch your step so you didn’t trip over a stone hiding in the grass. A hundred years of rain had made most of the tombstones hard to read. Our tour guide noted that since the cemetery was abandoned for many years, some people buried loved ones there when they couldn’t afford other options. The headstones of these poor souls were nothing more than poured concrete slabs with a name and date crudely scratched by hand while the concrete was still wet.

Tiny stones marked the resting place of children. Other stones identified the final resting place of a member of the navy, an enslaved person, and many wives. So many old tombstones note that a woman was a wife to a man, but none state only a man’s first name and identifies the woman he was married to. These headstones are echoes of the misogyny these women endured. Only two graves were decorated with flowers, plastic, and very faded. Most of these souls are long forgotten by time and their community.

It was striking that all these people were reduced to a few impersonal facts scrawled into a rock. Eventually, even their monuments are forgotten and reclaimed by the Earth. It’s a stark reminder that our time here is fleeting. Even those who knew us are gone within a generation or two, reducing what exists of our memory in the world.

The time I’ve spent walking cemeteries makes me realize they are not so much for the dead but for the living. They emphasize that we must live while we have the opportunity, remind us of those who came before us, and demonstrate that we all suffer the same end regardless of social or economic status. The time between birth and death is but a quick dash. The final address for most of us will be a cemetery.

What we do before we reach it is up to us.