I like walking with my daughter. We don't get to do it all that often, since she goes to the gym three days a week with her Community Living and Supports person, but every once in awhile she comes up short on steps and needs me to fill in. She's got a sweet deal with me in which if she meets her step goal (7,500 steps per day) for every day of the month, she gets a prize of her own choosing. Usually a doll. It is a strong motivator for her. In fact, she has not missed her goal for over 300 days as of this writing, and almost always exceeds her goal.
Anyway. Today we deviated from our usual route, and walked up to the rear entrance of the U of L Shelby Campus. And as we turned
into the campus, right here
I saw the low wall of a cemetery I'd visited some time ago, and I asked Jacqueline if she wanted to visit it. She surprised me by acceding to the suggestion. (This is, after all, the girl who, after The Simpsons' Homer, refers to funeral homes as Hell Places.)
Most of the gravestones in this little cemetery were broken off or unreadable, but I spotted two which were intact.
So, both of them died in 1814. And both of these men had served in the Revolutionary War...and were born in the early 1740s. As in almost 280 years ago.
Wow. That's some sobering stuff, isn't it?
Even more sobering, in a way, was this stone:
You'd have to be doing a whole lot better than I can do in order to read this one.
And the message to me was the same one that Hamlet expounded upon in the graveyard scene of his eponymous play: we're here, we do some things, and then we're gone...and soon after that we're forgotten, and soon after that every trace of our existence is wiped from the face of the Earth. The dust of Alexander the Great becomes a cork stopping a bunghole.
With that in mind, it's hard for me to imagine that anything is really worth doing.
Except for walking with my daughter. That's worth doing. And reading to her and to my son. And talking to my other son. And playing music with him. And....
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