Blog Written in an Urban Home

A little while before we took our class field trip to the graveyard, I had actually gone to take pictures in both that cemetary and the cemetary near the PENTICTON sign for my blog post about Holy Sonnet 6, so I had already recently experienced many of the same emotions I felt when we went to the graveyard as a class to read Thomas Gray's poem, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.  It was very sad seeing all the graves, especially the ones of the young children, or the men who died at war, and all those who had unfulfilled potentials.  Seeing the tombstone of the "Infant Daughter" who died at six months old I found extrememly sad because, one, she didn't even have a name yet, or, if she did, I wondered why her parents choose not to write it on her tombstone? And, two, because I just connected to that poor young couple who lost their daughter so soon after she was born back in 1916.  Just like in Gray's poem, everyone wants to be mourned and wants to be remembered when they die, but for how long was this little girl remembered?  Did her parents have other children before her and she was just an "accident"? Or, maybe she was their first child and after she passed away they never had another child? Maybe after she passed away her parents had a dozen more children and she was never thought of again? I wonder what she died from and, if in different circumstances, she would've lived and would've grown up to become a potential world-changer! I don't know whether her family was rich or poor, but, just as Gray wrote, "The path of glory lead but to the grave," meaning that everyone, even if you are rich, ends up the same: dead.  The thought that Death comes to everyone is a depressing thought, but also reassuring, in a way, for people who are not as fortunate or are unhappy with their lives for they know, one day, they will move on from this life.  Gray wrote about those who have unrealized potential, and I just hope that I will not die before I have achieved something of significance, something meaningful, showing how I fulfilled my potential!