Advice from a graveyard

About seven years ago, my family went through a hard time. My son was having problems with Asperger's Syndrome, my husband and I were arguing about this and that and nothing seemed to be going right. Hoping for better times for our family, we bought a Victorian cottage near a church ruin and antique graveyard that had cast a spell on us. Each morning I'd take a cup of tea into the graveyard and walk, marveling at the beauty and peace I found there.

While I pondered the best way to proceed with my life, I took solace from walking among the graves, reading faded inscriptions. I stopped at the grave of Victorian babies – I counted three dead and the mother taken in childbirth with the last one. Reflecting on that poor woman having to look into the chilly darkness of her children's graves put my modern problems into perspective. I didn't want to be careless with my own children's lives by doing something irrevocable simply because I was angry with my husband. The weight of what the mother had gone through gave me an anchor for the afternoon.

When I noted how many young people buried there had been brought down by cholera, malaria or some other condition we no longer worry about, I decided it's a privilege to live long enough to have problems exacerbated by a long life and marriage. I strolled past the grave of a girl 'who left us in her 13th year'. She was the same age as my daughter at the time. Her sad mother had written: 'The flowers appeareth on the Earth. The flowers fadeth.'

Walking home, I finally decided not to be a modern wimp, but to keep strong and fight for my family's future. I thought my friends in the graveyard approved, for as I walked away, the sun suddenly shone on a tombstone that I'd never seen before: "Whether we wake or sleep," the inscription affirmed, "we live together."