A Story in Stone

I recently visited an historical cemetery at Running Stream, north of Lithgow in central New South Wales. I was there with a group of my wife's relations as part of their family reunion. While there was a group of twenty or so of us there, I found myself a quiet moment alone, contemplating the inscription on a large gravestone in the top corner of the small cemetery.

The cemetery sits on a small, grassy knoll, about 50 metres behind the old church, and as most old cemeteries are, is overgrown (though selectively cleared for our visit) and slowly being gathered back again into the earth. I find comfort in this slow recycling of souls and stones alike; a reclamation of what we borrow for a time and soon give back. The small stream running at the far end of the paddock and the nearby woodland of red gum, box and callitris stood testimony to both the constancy and the ever-changing nature of time, in which our lives are the briefest of flowerings, in the briefest of seasons.

The headstone I pondered on had no flowery, reverential or religious text, merely a parsimonious record of who and when. In totality the headstones recorded:

Sacred to the memory of William Walton, who departed this life March 27 1859, aged 39 years.

Under a single slim line was then recorded:

Also Sarah Walton, who died March 10 1862, aged 2 years and 6 mos.

There was another slim line under this, but the remaining third of the headstone was blank under it.

William died three years before his daughter who died two and a half years old those three years later. So, it would seem, William's wife was three months pregnant with Sarah when her husband died. Her memorial in flesh and bone, her daughter, didn't even make it to her third birthday. Losing children early was far too common in these hard times, but this seemed a cruel blow even so.

I surmised that the remaining area of the headstone was reserved for either William's wife or their other children, if there were any; yet it remains blank. Did his wife leave the area, distraught at the loss of both her husband and daughter? Did she find love, marriage, family and happiness again later in life, elsewhere? I don't know, there are no other headstones concerning this family to be discerned in the cemetery.

I found this headstone deeply moving, both for the story written upon it, and for all the things it didn't record: the hardship, the deep pain, the on-going struggle for this family.

Thirty-one words on a gravestone, too few words to be all that record these lives. Yet I'm hopeful that someday William and his wife's real legacy have and will revisit this quiet, grassy cemetery and stand testament in themselves to all the unwritten words for William, his wife and Sarah.