On the 336th day of the year, the first entry of the year

In the folder labeled Brothers, there are over 500 email exchanges between my brothers and me, my parents and me, my brothers and my parents, and all of us to all others. Some are short one-way communications. Some extend to dozens of back-and-forth as a minuet detail of the past is retold and relived until it is alive again.

So while it has been over a year since the last entry in this log, there have been words written. Many, many words.

And there have been visits. Many visits it seems: some around holidays; several around birthdays in Dothan; and others without holiday or anniversary, but just a visit to deliver butterflies.

But our visit (Paul, Lauren, Max & Hannah) was so we could have Thanksgiving dinner together. It took a weaving of travels of four people in two cars over five days, but the four of us had Thanksgiving dinner at Mama’s table with Daddy offering the blessing. That was a blessing.

Mama, Daddy and I visited the cemetery at Beulah Church, Grandmother Williamson's home church. There were many Burdeshaws there, much like there are many Williamsons at Selma Church. There are two tower monuments, nearly six feet high, one each for Philip and Celia, and the grave of John who was not actually buried there as his "footstone" explained: his remains are in a military cemetery in Elmira, NY where he died a prisoner of war.

Visiting these family plots in church cemeteries is a way for me to connect with the past and my past. I suppose it is simply that under each headstone (literally) there is a story, one that we may only know a tiny bit of...a name and a couple of dates. Some tell more. Family plots with the remains of generations tell the most stories, and strolling through the headstone hedgerows with my Mama and Daddy gives voice to those stories.