Sometimes the search for family touches my heart in a way I never anticipated.
A rock fence lines this cemetery. It is just beyond the perimeter of the cemetery located at Beth Shiloh Church in York, South Carolina.
The souls lie here in a powdery soil, underneath a thick stand of old trees.
Mostly forgotten. There are only two markers here that bear names. Most are just fieldstones and there is a scattering of crude metal crosses. These crosses standing in silent memory of the person buried beneath them.
Who are these souls?
Slaves, Paupers, or both?
I do not know. I only feel their pain, that they are not remembered properly.
Lost souls in a powdery grave, all those that may have known them, long gone themselves.
Forgotten with time passing and marching on. The world just moves on.
The church has a sound system mounted on the roof that plays music, apparently on the hour. The chimes of a hymn drifted over the still air as I searched the cemetery.
I take solace that the beautiful strains of the hymns play for the lost souls that lie down the hill from the cemetery. Those that lie beneath the small stones.
Rest in peace.