Often, when we go on vacation, we visit old cemeteries. They offer a real glimpse into a past most of us today find hard to understand; a glimpse into the way our concept of death has changed in the age of scientific health care and antibiotics.
These pictures are from a old graveyard in Cade's Cove, in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Many old graveyards are full of the kind of thing you see here- childrens' gravestones a year or two old a year or two apart. When you think about it, it's heartbreaking.
We know of one place in central Georgia- a succession of small headstones, in a long row in a family plot, a year or two apart- nine in all.
We really live in a different day than our grandparents and great-grandparents. Infant death is so foreign to us as to be almost unheard of- and thank God for that. Among so many other things- thank God for that.
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