The empty folding chair.

A glorious persimmon tree is on the north side of Bethel Road, heading east to I-24 from my house. In more than thirty years of living here, I had never noticed it until this year. This year, 2023, the tree is bounding with fruit. The foliage of the persimmon tree is a shiny dark green, and the persimmons, when fully ripe, are smooth and the color of a pumpkin. I think the persimmon tree presents itself beautifully in the fall.

I was so impressed with the tree that when I got home, I got my camera and returned to capture its grandeur. The tree was next to the road, and the only way to safely get out of the car was to pull into the entrance of the Mayes Cemetery. This cemetery is a very old “resting place” for the remains of the departed. And it is as diminutive as old, only about half an acre. It might be an insignificant place as far as cemeteries go, but it is highly significant by the headstone, particularly for one grave.

After taking the pictures of the persimmons, I decided to look over the rise upon which the cemetery sat. Walking the twenty or so steps toward the back of the burial ground, I was stunned by what I discovered.

The earth was recovering from a relatively recent disturbance of a fresh burial. The flowers of the sympathy sprays showed signs of detachment from their roots as they lay on and around the sight. A large marble headstone was embossed with the family name in all capitals. Below the name were two given names, one on the right and one on the left. The name on the right has a given name and a starting date. The name on the left side also had a given name and beginning date, but it also had an ending date, 2023.

Such a sight is not unusual in any cemetery. What arrested my thoughts and continued to evoke an emotional journey for me was the old, beaten-up metal folding chair that sat at the foot of the grave in a way that its occupant might view the entire sight and process their pain.

I debated for a moment as to whether or not it was appropriate to take a picture. I took the picture. I am still pondering the emotions the sight has stirred in my heart. I do not know the family. But I can identify with their loss so much so that I hesitated to take the picture and am just now getting the courage and clarity to focus my emotions into words.

That piece of earth’s crust may not be “Holy,” but the tears of the grieved have hollowed it. As I write these thoughts, I regularly hit the key below my ring finger on my right hand, the period. The period is the appropriate end of every statement we might write. It marks the end of a completed thought.

That filled-in hole in the ground is like a period at the end of our earthly lives. Only then are our lives complete. There are other marks for ending a sentence. Each of these deserves to be pondered in turn as we take one of those deep dives into our lives and the lives of those we love.

As life piles up behind our “now,” it seems to demand a review and assessment of our lives in anticipation of the “period” that awaits us. Debriefings are standard expectations for most of the tasks we complete. So, it is not a bad or morbid thing. It is a good thing. Until our “dot” has been punched, we can edit our sentence’s structure and grammar.

Notice that the folding chair is empty.

As we plod through the vacuum in our broken hearts or our devastated dreams, our “sentence” is still being written. The beating of our heart is God’s promise there is living that can and must be pursued. The joy of the Lord will never be extinguished, or its abundant flow to humans will be diminished. As long as our Creator is joyous, we have the adventure of discovering and bathing in it.

The folding chair at the grave was appropriate; we must find space to grieve our losses and assess the opportunities our losses lay before us. In writing our completed sentence, we must also get out of that chair to discover what God is doing next. Return to your chair as often as you need. But only to get the courage to keep on writing your life story. And don’t take the chair with you; I may need to sit in it for a while.

Nehemiah 8:10

Then he said to them, “Go and eat what is rich, drink what is sweet, and send portions to those who have nothing prepared, since today is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve (too much) because the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Christian Standard Bible (Enclosed in the parentheses are my words.)

Photo – Some of you do not get the photo attached to my blogs. If you want to see the image, go to https://capturinglife.blog/