I haven't been much on church for a long time. I find I get more of a sense of the precious transience and absurd relevance of our time here by visiting cemeteries or staring off into the sea. They focus me in some way that pulpit posturing and shillyshally about the hereafter just isn't able to. On my way to take a few pictures of Lake Michigan, I noticed this small graveyard tucked out of the way in a corner of the naval base at Great Lakes. It lay surrounded by woods, a small parking lot and an unlabelled building that huddled close by like a protective mother.  I got out of the rental car, intrigued.



It's as small a cemetery as it looks. A placard nearby claims there are 277 plots, but I would guess that more than half are not in use. At first it seemed like those interred here were predominantly World War I and II sailors buried from 1900-1950, with a sprinkling of WAVES and Korea/Vietnam veterans. There is also this.




Something like that always gets to me. I have often thought it would be one of the saddest things in the world to die with your loved ones never quite knowing for sure what happened to you. It's doubly cruel; a tombstone like that seems to mock the person buried there, saying that whatever good he might have accomplished in this world, however significant she has been in the lives she touched, it wasn't enough and it will forever after go unrecognized.

The cemetery has a section set aside from all the others. I thought these would be more ranks of veterans, but I was wrong.













I was shaken when I realized. On the verge of tears. I felt something close to shame as I looked over my shoulder at the UNKNOWN headstone. I had been ruminating on an unrecognized death, and here was an entire wing of the cemetery dedicated to lives completely unlived.  I began thinking about how sad it must be to lose a child, and I spent a moment feeling that sadness and at the same time feeling grateful for the wonder of my girls and for the love I feel for them and from them.

I totally lost it when the full weight of this fell upon me.