Comfort Ye

{death}

{silence}

{freedom}

Today we went to my great uncle's burial at Arlington cemetery. I wish I could remember him, but I cannot even put a face to his name. I could not feel the loss like others around me could, but it was still very meaningful to me. Here it is...

~~~

We pass grave after grave. Each grave is all that is left of its person. The gravestones read unknown name after unknown name. 

No one says a word, only the wind speaks, and the eerie sound of the crowd breaths.

A rumble rolls over the ground. Airplane. Just ordinary over the silent, but the most unique kind of ordinary. 

Rest On Embalmed And Sainted Dead Dear As The Blood Ye Gave

No Impious Footsteps Here Shall Tread

The Herbage Of Your Grave

reads the gate we pass through. No one says a word, we do not think. We feel.

His coffin wades through the graves pulled by two moon-eyed stallions. And we fallow it. No one says a word, we do not think, we feel.

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD'S hand double for all her sins. 

Someone says these words, we do not think, we hear. 

What comfort can there be here? We ask without words. 

Three times we hear shots fired. They do not kill, just echo the death already made. 

On my own I feel nothing but from the stories that the tears in others tell, I feel something. I feel unfinished stories find an end. I feel unspoken words find a voice. I feel un-given love find a beginning. 

And the trumpets play our national anthem and my heart swells with pride. Then the real anthem plays when the Champlain raises his hands and promises peace from the one above. 

And there is life in all the dead, hope in all the broken, words in all the unspoken. Christ is the resurrection and the life. 

We all say words, we do not cry, we smile. 

{resurrection}

{hope}

{eternity}

{life}

~~~

~storyteller