Jewish Cemetery

Entrance to Covedale Cemeteries

I like to walk through cemeteries. They are a quiet place to sit in normally busy areas. I would never live by one though. I've seen the movie Poltergeist too many times in my nightmares to even think that would be okay.

There is a Jewish cemetery on the corner of Sidney and Anderson Ferry. I am sure you have seen it. I've driven past it countless times without a thought. The day I stopped I really hadn't planned on it. I was driving past on my way to Hobby Lobby, when I saw it. An opportunity to try something new in a familiar setting. I pulled my car into the small parking lot, with no designated spots.

I walked down the path through the individual rows of head stones. All labeled with names, dates, and markings in Hebrew. I wish I knew what they said. I wish I could understand the words. I imagine they are prayers and thoughts chosen by loved ones. Maybe they provide more detail as to who the person was. Even though I couldn't understand the meaning, the symbols alone were beautiful.

On many of the headstones there were little lockets. The idea being you could lift it up and see a picture of the person whose grave you were visiting. Unfortunately time has not been too friendly to most of these. Some have been stolen or scratched out by vandals. Others the rusting metal leeched through to the photos causing them to disintegrate.

The cemetery was a lot larger than I had originally thought. It is always so strange to me when I think of how each gravestone represents at least one person. Imagine if the stones themselves were the actual people. What would they say?

There were a number of them that had marks on their stones signifying they had lived through the holocaust. I went through a phase when I was in seventh grade, where I had to know everything about the holocaust. I watched movies, documentaries, and read as many books as I could. It wasn't the Jewish traditions I was interested in. I think the question I wanted answered was "Why?" Think about it. At that age seeing the number 11,000,000 and knowing that it was not an accident that all those people died. Back then I still believed in definitive truths. If this then that. I never came up with a good answer. Who honestly could?  The closest I came was "hate" and "because".

In the background there is a headstone with the photos scratched out

I wish I had been more interested in the traditions back then. I walked through the rows of headstones. Some were very new. Most were older. A great number of them had stones resting on them. There was no rhyme or reason to the placement. I knew that stones are like flowers to Jewish people in cemeteries. I don't know exactly why. The only reason I knew this was because of the last scene in Schindler's List. The idea seemed strange to me before. Why not bring flowers? After having been through the
cemetery, I think I get it.

Each stone represents someone who cared enough to come out and place it. There were many stones that could have simply been picked up off of the gravel path and placed. There were others though that you could tell were specifically brought to the cemetery to be placed on the grave of a loved one. To me there really is no greater memorial. Flowers die, but stones take forever to erode. There is no telling how long each stone had been there. I think that is the beauty of it. Stones stay, and are a perpetual reminder to anyone who sees them that indeed that person was loved.

The placement of this cemetery isn't ideal. Its neighbors are houses and an H.H. Gregg. Through the smattering of trees I could tell someone had lived there not too long ago. When I walked along the back fence there was a never ending chorus of dogs barking. When I would escape the earshot of one dog, I would walk past the backyard of another.

 This cemetery is beautiful in its own right. Its placement is in the thrum of people's lives. The grounds are well taken care of and serene. Still the bulk of the population seems to not see it. Maybe it is because we don't want that reminder of the inevitable while we are loading our new washer and dryer into the back of our truck. Or simply it isn't worth thinking about because we don't know anyone buried there. I don't know. All I do know is that it is worth a stop, when you have time.