A Message for the Living

I pulled onto Ingraham and into a strip mall parking lot to the right of the road.  My back already drenched in sweat from the less-than-adequate air-conditioning in my car, I stepped out, grabbed my bag, and slung it over my shoulder.  I stood up out of the vehicle and shut the door, my eyes moving to the lot across the road as I did.
Even in that second, I knew Tiger Flowers would be different from most any other cemetary I had ever been to.  I just didn't know why yet.  The green grass and rows of cement gave it the appearance of any other cemetary.
I looked both ways and then jogged across the road, no longer caring how my shirt was soaked or that I tend to walk (much less, run) awkwardly when I wear flip-flops.
As I slowed down and entered the small black frame of the entrance, I saw right away one difference in this cemetary that I had not ever seen.

I don't know that I have ever seen a cement casket, and I don't know that I have ever seen a casket not fully in the ground.  I definitely haven't seen a cement casket not fully in the ground, for sure, though.
And there was a sea of them!  So many cement caskets, they blanketed the grounds and gave it quite the eerie look.  I honestly didn't know what to make of it.
As time progressed, I somehow wondered further and further back.  I found myself reading more and more markers.  And then, to think, under each stone there is a face.  And there were people who loved that face, people who felt warmth in their heart every time that face turned a corner.
John Doe, was he a devoted dad that found joy in reading bedtime stories? a thoughtful husband who loved nothing more than romancing his wife? a teenage boy who had only begun to live?
As I read the dates on each marker, a pattern became apparent: almost every single person never even lived to see seventy years old.  I had always thought the average life to be eighty!  These poor people.
And even now, as the hours of the day grow dark and I am left with my thoughts, I find myself asking questions like who stood at that grave? that very same grave where I stood.  Were there friends that numbered as many as a hundred and fifty coming to say goodbye for the very last time to their comrad?  Was there an eight-year-old daughter who clung to who her father's grave while her mother, who had been reduced to a mess, broke down when she had no idea how to help Daddy's Little Girl go on without her best friend?
And what of this couple's grave plot?

A man's wife lies six feet beneath the ground, and is he plagued by thoughts of spiritual suicide, like C.S. Lewis after he lost his beloved?  Or is he even counting down the days until a date can be added to the other end of the dash on his marker?

IS ANY OF THIS FAIR?!

Now here is the part of my experience that is most important.  Just as I had begun to let my heart break for the hardships these people's families had to face, I glanced up.  I'm not really sure why, but I did.  And I noticed someone walking up the path, a pleasant bounce in their step as they came.  I began walking towards them and felt a smile grow within as I noticed the familiar face of a friend.  Monica and I crossed paths at sunny spot where no mournful-looking tree had casted its shadow.  And then not but a second later, we look up to see Matt off in the distance, as well.
And that's when it occurred to me: perhaps Lewis, in his dreadful state of mind, was surely right about one thing.  He questions the act of sugarcoating a mournful sympathy, even calling his faith in those situations simply imagination when he lost the person closest to him.
And it occurred to me.  I have wonderful friends.  I have a family who loves me and a God who absolutely desires me.  Who am I to pretend like I sympathize?

As I was walking out, unsure of why things happen the way they do but thanking God for the blessings He's poured out on me, one of the very last grave markers caught my eye.  It was a woman's name, and she had lived around eighty years.  Even though my time was up and I was long past ready to go, I knelt down to read the inscription at the bottom of the stone.  I repeated the inscription in my head so that I would at least remember the gist of it.  I looked into it, and read into it thoroughly.  It had been meant for me!  Even after I thought my experience was over, I had stumbled upon this last piece of the puzzle--the puzzling thoughts I had been troubled by.  Thank you, God...it was the perfect ending to my revealing adventure at Tiger Flowers Cemetary.

*The inscription's gist (and yes, the inspiration for the title): "A message for the living Psalm 91" [ Go read it, if you like =~) ]