Norwegian bachelor......grave digger.

     Childhood, for me, was peopled with an interesting cast of characters. In childish naivete I assumed that cast to be largely static. Now I see clearly how fluid it was and remember fondly many of the characters who inhabited it. It's one of the fun things I do with the few childhood friends remaining to me.
     Since Joanne was buried in the country cemetery, near The Little House, I've spent much time at her grave and visiting her neighbors, family and acquaintances, resting in peace. Having finished my assigned reading, The Alice Network for book club, I returned to Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow, which Lisa gave me for Christmas but I didn't finish before leaving for Asia.
    Jayber Crow is a novel in the form of Jayber Crow reflecting on his life from the perspective of old age. Jayber was a barber in a hamlet. Deciding he needed more income to provide for his old age he accepts the side jobs of grave digger and church janitor. These are jobs he can do after his barber shop is closed for the day,
   Jayber reflects on the people of the cemetery:
"...They had all belonged here once, and they were so much more numerous than the living. I thought and thought about them. It was endlessly moving to walk among the stones, reading the names of people I had known in my childhood, the names of people I was kin to but had never known, and (pretty soon) the names of people I knew and cared about and had buried myself....The people there had lived their little time in this world, had become what they became, and could now could be changed only by forgiveness and mercy. The misled, the disappointed, the sinner of the sins, the hopeful,the faithful, the loving, the doubtful, the desperate, the grieved and the comforted, the young and the old, the bad and the good--all sufferers unto death, had lain down there together....Why should have I felt tender toward them all was not clear to me, but I did.
    "There were a lot of graves of little children--most of them from from the last century or before--who had died of smallpox, cholera, typhoid fever, diphtheria, or one of the other plagues. You don't have to know the stories; just the dates and size of the stones told the heartbreak." PP. 157-8.

    Berry expresses much of what I feel when I visit Joanne's cemetery and wander among the graves. She lies next to my grandparents whom I never met. Many of the graves in this cemetery were dug by Ed Olson, who worked with pick and shovel for eight hours to dig one grave. His pay?  $10.00. Now, he too, lies buried in this cemetery.

   With winter upon us I'm not visiting The Little House nor Joanne. I ma keen to return when spring breaks.

Takk for alt,

Al