Hill Village
Yesterday I revisited a remote New Hampshire village.
A triangle of 19th century homes, two little churches, and a town pound for stray cattle, it was the colonial land grant to a Congregational minister that included a parsonage and a burying ground. Located on a forested hilltop, there are no local businesses, no traffic lights. Modern developments never intruded on its isolation. It could be a movie set. I had found it last year by accident, driving around with my camera. There is palpable wealth of narrative unknown to me, and that is what drew me back, as though photographs could breach a husk of privacy. As it turned out, my camera was a mere accessory that day.
I was lucky to meet an older gent who turned out to be one of the village homeowners. He spied my making photos of the stone pound in the woods. “Are you taking pictures, or watering the plants?” he asked. I wasn’t sure if he was inquiring about my artistic interest or my bladder habits, but he smiled when he repeated the question so I’d get the joke, and I quickly changed the subject. “There must be SO many stories about this historic community,” I suggested hopefully, and he told me some, inviting me to walk with him through the old cemetery. His wife was a seventh generation descendant of the original minister land grantee, and sadly he was to bury her ashes here the next day.
They had moved here from Boston just a few years ago, her life’s dream to return to her ancestral home. “She died in her sleep last winter,” he said looking away for her memory. “… before me,” he added wincing with heartrending regret. On that hallowed ground, I felt compelled to share with him my own apprehension in this matter; who wants to outlive their beloved spouse? (My wife and I agree that it’s an unresolvable quandary. As we walked, the weight of his grief seemed to bend him like granite across his shoulders.
In preparation for her interment and celebration of life, he had scrubbed clean the age-blackened markers of her ancestors, I could imagine him completing this mitzvah on his hands and knees. He had arranged paired headstones for her and eventually him, – his with Hebrew inscriptions I couldn’t read. An artificial turf blanket lay across the small excavation for her urn. As we left, he looked weary, and he confirmed that sleep had been difficult. I saw a man who knew the bitter tonic of grief work.
He paused walking. “I’m Jewish,” he remarked with a half-smile. “My wife inherited the Congregational Church treasurer position from her mother. Now it passes to me,” he said with a wry shrug. Irony can be a strange gift, even now.
I was relieved that I’d had sufficient life experience of my own to “hear” him and sympathize. Our brief tour was an unexpected and solemn privilege. I’d forgotten the camera around by neck and instead received the gift of a mourning husband sharing with me, a stranger, his deep loss. I imagined myself in his place, the dread of waking up one frigid winter morning, newly alone.
Though tempted, I decided not to attend tomorrow’s Celebration of Life. I hadn’t become a friend of the family or member of the community. Our connection had been real, but momentary. Trying to extend it could diminish its clarity.
I think he will remember me if I see him again when I wander through this village in the future. Perhaps he’ll be on his hands and knees weeding a new flower bed by his kitchen window. I’m a good garden talker and we can reconnect this time over July blooming perennials, some of which my wife and I could share with him from our own thriving garden back home.
