Raised in a cemetery

Roselawn Cetemery; Downtown Hattiesburg - 7th Street

I spent many a happy family outing here.  Roselawn Cemetery.  It had special meaning for my parents and it was the only cemetery in town with a duck pond.

My parents came to Hattiesburg for the university & on days off from classes they would spend time together & feed the ducks here.

Possibly there was some smooching going on here in the late 1960's?  Though it can not be confirmed, I'd bet the left side of my body on it.  It is just SO Paul & Jill.  Our love of cemeteries started with this simple pre-marriage love & escape.

Swampy pond complete with Cypress trees & knees,
fish & fowl.

We'd go see dad at his work around lunch time.  He'd cose shop & we'd stop at Sunflower for a loaf of light bread.  We'd go to the cemetery & feed the ducks.  After an hour we'd drive dad back to work.  These were also spur of the moment trips for the weekend.  But you couldn't go to this particular cemetery without bread.

I LOVED these random, crazy family outings.  Though I wouldn't find out until much later in life that most families don't do this sort of thing.  We were odd;  eccentric others called us.  But, they were very happy times for me.




I would get all excited & jump around.  I'd help dad purchase the bread.  I was the first one out of the car running for the swampy pond.  I'd enjoy tossing out pinches of bread to the ducks.  After a while I didn't enjoy this last part very much.  I would somehow forget that the ducks & geese would crowd around the odd looking duck that was only a little bigger than them; the one who was handing out food.  They'd squack their fowl talk and nip at me.   Later I just fed the fish instead and steered clear of the birds.

Do people really want to fish in a graveyard?

But, I equally enjoyed the graveyard itself.  I'd run around and visit all the people.  Mom had already taught us from a very young age to be respectful; no walking on the graves, no sitting or rough housing on head stones or grave covers.

Reading "The Graveyard Book" by Neil Gaiman made me feel all warm and cozy.  It is a really amazing book and while I wasn't raised by spirits and I didn't actually live in a cemetery, I spent most of my life in them.

How many kids can say that, unless their parents are grounds keepers?


But, it was not contained to this particular graveyard or one's in our immediate area.  Oh no.  Family holidays were NEVER complete without romps through caves (I always insisted) and cemeteries.  We couldn't pass one anywhere without all of us excitedly wanting to stop and check it out.

Not the apparently abandoned section.

It's always so interesting, what you will find in a graveyard.  All the history that time & sometimes, people have forgotten.  Just in this particular one, in an apparently abandoned corner of the graveyard, there I found a marker in both English and Chinese.  The woman was born in China, emigrated to Hattiesburg in the 1930's and lived out her life here.

That is not something common for this area.  I like to visit her when I go to Roselawn & clean her grave off; I also light a joss stick for her.