I happened upon it by accident. 

If I hadn’t missed my turn, I probably never would have seen it.

It was tucked away on a little grassy hill, behind what looked like used to be industrial buildings now sitting idle.

I slowed my pace as I walked by and read the dates. 

1840-1860’s.

Much of the writing was too worn away to read much more than a name or a date.

I suppose there weren’t any more than 30 graves resting there, beside the alley in that small Pennsylvania town.

I thought of the graves then, and the graves today. 

I seriously doubted the embalming process preserved as well as it does today.

And, I also highly doubted that they had the heavy, concrete vaults that the watertight caskets are placed in today.

I imagined more of a pine box, simple and unadorned with its missive of grief inside.

Surrounding dirt and moisture having done its work, I guessed the pine box probably wasn’t there anymore.

And what of its contents?

Likely, pieces remained, either of clothing or of the human that once was.

But what would have been discovered, should the tombstones have been removed, and some unknowing residential renovator moved in with large backhoe and trucks tasked with leveling that particular hill?

Would anything have caught their eye?

Maybe.

But then again, for the sake of my train of thought, maybe not.

I wondered, as I walked on towards the Mexican restaurant that google maps pointed me towards, what purpose we have today in preservation of these earthly remains.

I pondered why God made us to decay so soon.

Sure, I have no problem honoring the lives of those we lay away.

But it seemed fitting, standing there by the hillock, to think that there was nothing left.

Except a seed.

And that seed only figurative at best.

But a seed, tucked away, that one day will spring forth out of the ground, bearing in its plant that which it was planted with, either that which flowers, or that which is something to be cast away.  

Because a seed can’t grow up into a different plant than it was planted as.