My apologies for being weird and spending time amongst tombstones, but I'm working on documenting our church's cemetery info. Earlier this summer, the deacons of our church issued a call for a volunteer or two to take on this cemetery task. The past several Sunday afternoons, I"ve spent a couple hours there, making a chart of the gravestone rows, and trying to write down and photograph the engravings. Many of the really old stones are almost impossible to read anymore. Many include long verses in German. Geboren means "born" and Gestorben means "died". I think Hier ruht in Gott means "asleep in God", or something like that. Maybe someone can tell me what the second half of this verse means (I think the first part means "Christ is my Love"): Christus ist mein Leben; Sterben ist mein Gewinn. (Maybe the second part means, "Heaven is my Home".) [After publishing, I found the German-English dictionary website linked to at the end of this post. Sterben means "death", and Gewinn means "profit; prize", the verse coming from Philippians 1:21.]
***
***
***
Anyhow.........can you tell what's hanging on this tombstone? Oh, that's right.........the title of this blogpost gave it away!!
Its an abandoned Monarch butterfly chrysalis----hanging on the stone of a 39-year-old woman named Christine who died in February of 1902, one day after giving birth to a son, Henry, who died the same day he was born. He's buried here, too; a story-teller could probably weave a moving tale from the few facts on and around this tombstone. (Just think of ALL the stories buried in ALL the cemeteries ALL over the world!) I had our church's history book with me, and looked up the baptism of little Henry.......yes, it is recorded that he was born, baptized, and died, all on the same day. Baptism-----surely an extra special comfort in those days when birthing deaths were so common. Also, I complain about Lutherans sometimes, but they certainly do keep meticulous records of events like baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and burials-----useful info for genealogical research..JPG)
**
**
I had blogged a few weeks ago about a chrysalis in our road ditch, and how it appeared to have tiny gold metallic beading around it. The beading is still visible on this empty one, too. Amazing, too, how it could stay attached to the tombstone, even in windy weather conditions.
***
***
******
This tends to be a very peaceful spot to spend time in........there's just me, the warm sunshine, silent stones, rustling cornstalks, chirping crickets, and killdeer and finches flitting by with a rapid-song greeting. In the next photo, my chair is sitting between two rows of childrens' stones. That first row along the cornfield contains adult graves.......then there's the two rows of children, then another adult row, and another children's row. There's alot of children, unfortunately, in these rows dating from the 1880's onward to the early 1900's. Common name choices of the era and culture include Friedrich, Johann, Heinrich, Wilhelm, Maria, Dorothea, Caroline.
***
***
***
***
So, you may or may not wonder..........do I remain stoically unaffected by my sojourn amongst the tombstones? Well-----being not made of granite or marble-----I bawled all the way home this time (which is only five miles)........then was OK again. If my family noticed my red eyes, I could always easily mislead them by saying the pollen count must be high, causing my hayfever to act up!
***
***
***
P.S. - To see some fantastic photos of a Monarch butterfly chrysalis,
***
***
***
[P.S. again - After publishing this post, I found a link to a German-English dictionary site from which to find translations of the German words!]
***
***
***
.JPG)
.JPG)
.jpg)
