So What's It All About?
Tuesday 03/22/2005 10:44 AM
 Another view of the potter's field. (2005) File Under: Cemeteries; I Took This Photo!; Potter's Field |
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After discovering Abe and Emmett and learning the secret of the stones, I kept wandering west, toward the sound of the highway.
It was there that I found freshly dug graves with small, vulnerable markers. Some of them had been replaced with small marble gravestones flush with the ground. One guy was a Korean war vet — he had a clean, simple veteran's headstone unlike the others. Obviously, this was a pauper's cemetery, but what about the stones in the backlot? I thought maybe slave graves or John Doe's.
Regardless of the residents, with this collection of predominantly unknown graves of indeterminate age, the most appropriate name was potter's field, a cemetery used for strangers, foreigners or the unknown. Incidentally, it's called a potter's field because the ground used for burying the unknown was typically not good for anything but digging up clay for making pots. So in olden times, there weren't a lot flowers or lush lawns in your typical potter's field.
Two decades later, I'd visit this patch of land again with my wife, my grandmother-in-law and my dog, and I'd discover a deeper connection with my life.
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