Infant Girl Houser’s Grave is Important, too

What do we do for others?

This is a question I have asked myself throughout life, but there is a point at which you want be careful, so you’re not taken advantage of.

But I believe in service …

Because I do not know all the answers as in:

Why are we here?

and

Why is my daughter gone?

I can serve at the capacity at which I’m able.

This means I may not be ready for a full on volunteer group,

but I work on children’s graves in the cemetery where my daughter’s body rests.

People in the communities where I live and work believe heavily in service. This is a beautiful thing in years when we have witnessed selfishness.

As a teacher, I believe in finding a path between self-full and a type of selflessness.

During the late spring and summer, people from my work and the community where I live brought meals and started working on Corrie’s Memorial Garden with us.

I wondered: What am I capable of right now?

Honestly, I adore the quiet, except what nature brings. I am okay with the silence.

I like the cemetery. I like the quiet and its natural beauty below the mountain.

I clean up graves of children, one teen, and two veterans.

I knew of groups that came through, and worked on veterans’ graves.

But I found a Vietnam Vet’s grave with roots growing over it after I had cleaned the grave of a baby who died in 1978.

I thought of my father and of his service in Vietnam. I could not leave the veteran’s grave like this.

But something has bothered me repeatedly. Each time I care for Thomas Houser and his infant sister’s grave, things are gone or destroyed (mostly on her grave). I call her Ann. She was born five days after Corrie, and I assume she was stillborn.

But infant girl or Ann, her name matters. I have found her grave like this:

All of the items I had left for Ann’s grave were gone last Saturday. I went to cut around the graves myself. I was determined the battery would last that long.

Corrie would be proud of the work I am doing. It is important to me. I was proud of myself for using a weed eater.

I am the kind who will find a solution. I will keep decorating and cleaning their graves. I may put a sign above hers.

There is no reason my daughter’s grave and the others for whom I care have graves that are okay while one’s grave is not.

Corrie was the kind to bribe two suckers, instead of one, from a restaurant or bank, so she could take one to her brother.

I tell each one they matter, and Ann’s grave matters as much as all the rest.

By Rebecca T. Dickinson