Mary Grannin, in religion Sister Mary Thomas, was born in 1860, before the Civil War. Somehow, in 1880, she made her way to the convent of the Ursulines of Brown County in southern Ohio and became a nun. I don't know where she came from, or why she decided to join the convent, or what took her life in the eleventh year of her religious profession. I only know where she ended up, in the small cemetery down the path from where the main convent buildings had been erected in the mid-1800s.
Since I was visiting family the past few days, I also stopped by to visit my nun friends and, with all of them pretty busy, I ended up taking a walk around the grounds where I had gone to junior high. Many of my former teachers now rest in the cemetery there, which is striking in its modesty. At home I frequently walk in the nearby historic cemetery, 400 acres of arboretum quality grounds where many of the past movers and shakers of my city are buried. The contrast is telling. A well-known businessman died here a couple of years ago, and it seemed that overnight his masoleum was erected and landscaped, with more expense lavished on the place where his bones lie than many people spend on their back yards over the course of several years.
The nuns, all of them heroes to former students and members of the small community where they play significant roles, take a different approach. Simple stones on the edge of a field mark the graves of women who accomplished more in their lives than most of us would in ten. They chose a place that seems to lie on the edge of the world, still so rural today that its isolation 150 years ago is unimaginable, and there created an oasis for the education of young women. And when they are finished with their work (and they never finish until they die), they move out to the edge of the field, with nothing but simple stones identical to those of their sisters to alert the rest of us to their existence.
It's very beautiful there, and I imagine that they feel at home. But I do wonder about Mary Grannin.
9 comments:
That looks like a very nice place to reflect and meditate.
I've often wondered what became of some of the nuns who were my favorite teachers when I was in grade school. Likely most of them lie in a similar place by now... Lisa :-]
I'm glad you like cemeteries as much as I do. I love the simplicity you presented these hauntingly beautiful graves with. The nuns would be proud. I often read the gravestones and wonder about the lives they lead. If it snows tomorrow (which is predicted) there is this bronze statue of a child running and lifting her arms up to the heavens...I am anxious to get a picture of this with the snow falling. I think it would be smashing.
Looks so peaceful...
I am thinking of you..... I do love it when you share, I see the world thru your eyes. judi
ah, a fellow cemetary freak. there are some small country graveyards in rural Texas where i have spent many a pondering hour walking, reading, feeling the lives of the people buried there. these are exquisitely haunting photos, Robin, lovely in their bare simplicity. but why do you wonder about this one woman, in particular?
I was trying to find the oldest graves. The very oldest are merely small crosses with names -- no dates or any other information, and then there are a few that are older than Mary Grannin's that are virtually unreadable. Hers struck me in part becasue it gave a few hints and in part because she was so young when she died.
Beautiful photographs. And very powerful.
You are an artist with your camera, ocean. Thank you for sharing these beautiful photographs. I, too, love cemeteries, especialy very old ones. I have visited Cape Cod quite frequently, and love to go to read the crumbling gravestones out there where whole families lie together, many of them taken either by the sea or by disease.
And I just heard that an old pair of gravestones was recently uncovered in Wales, revealing the longest marriage on record - 81 years, as recorded on the headstones - and verified in parish records. They died within two years of each other, both centenarians.
Vicky
http://www.livejournal.com/users/vxv789/
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