{"id":701,"date":"2011-04-10T22:46:14","date_gmt":"2011-04-10T13:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/tajohnson\/?p=701"},"modified":"2011-04-10T23:15:54","modified_gmt":"2011-04-10T14:15:54","slug":"2-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/tajohnson\/2011\/04\/10\/2-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Place"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s a place I go once or twice a year that holds a big piece of my heart. It\u2019s a beautiful place, high on a hill near the mountains in Gunma. An almost complete 360 degree panorama of mountains, rivers, villages, rice fields and cities spreads out below. At the center of this place is a large grassy area where occasional families picnic, couples walk slowly lost in thought, and solitary people stare into the past through the landscape of the present. Bordering this grassy oval are three burial mounds dating from the 6<sup>th<\/sup> century. One has been excavated to show the now empty keyhole shaped burial chamber built from stones; the other two lie hidden under dirt mounds now softened by grasses, cherry and pine trees. The graves belong to influential families who lived in this area long before my grandparents immigrated from Europe, before the Declaration of Independence was written, before the Mayflower sailed, before the first English Bible was printed- probably about the time young Patrick was kidnapped by Irish raiders. Fanning out from the mounds are section after section of modern granite graves marked off by paths and roads. In section 6 near the end of the row is the grave which holds the ashes of our daughter Karisa, born 3\/18\/96, died 8\/4\/04.<\/p>\n<p>When she died suddenly in 2004, a neighboring church offered us space in which to lay her urn. At the time the pain was too great to appreciate that gift or any other. The day we placed her ashes in the grave was gloomy, sticky, and ugly- a tropical yellow gray. I hated everything; I hated the stonemason I\u2019d never met who had misspelled her name on the stone, and I hated burying her among strangers. I wasn\u2019t sure I would be able to make myself return there after that day.<\/p>\n<p>In Japan, people traditionally visit the graves of relatives and friends on certain holidays or at important times like the loved one\u2019s birthday or what would have been a graduation day. Even when I couldn\u2019t bring myself to at first, a few of my friends went anyhow bringing flowers, offering prayers, weeping for us, Karisa, and themselves. In time, their care helped me want to go back, and as the pain began to subside, I started to notice things I hadn\u2019t before including the wild violets springing up between the paving stones in spring and the hawk circling effortlessly up, up, and up above the pines. Here and there in the cemetery I learned of the graves of friends\u2019 loved ones or occasionally found a stone which silently testified to the resurrection from the dead, an oddity in this part of the world. Little by little this place has become a treasured part of my world. Each visit I savor the weather, the view if it is visible, the scents of trees, flowers and incense carried on the wind. Each visit I feel the aching sadness of being so close and yet so far away from her. \u00a0As the years pass, some memories dim while others brighten, and though I feel the ever increasing distance from her throaty laugh, sweet smelling skin, and fierce hugs, I\u2019ve become more at ease with my own mortality and the briefness of this earthly sojourn.\u00a0 The day when death will be swallowed up in victory seems closer than ever, and my heart is strengthened to face what remains of my life.<\/p>\n<p>A dear friend and I had been planning on going in March, but the earthquake and subsequent crises interrupted plans. This past fall I hadn\u2019t been able to go due to settling into a new place in Tokyo, and the six months before that we\u2019d been in the States.\u00a0It was my first time back in over a year. Approaching the grave we were greeted by a profusion of swaying yellow mini daffodils just beginning to wrinkle and fade. Two years ago on her birthday I had brought a couple from my house and planted them in defiance of the sterility of granite and death. In that gravelly, barren strip of hard-packed dirt near the headstone I\u2019d never dreamed the bulbs would actually survive the heat of the summer or the dry freezing winds of the winter, but they had for two years, and in God\u2019s graciousness had bloomed in honor of what would have been her fifteenth birthday and graduation from junior high school- even though I couldn\u2019t get there in time myself.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2011\/04\/daff1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-706\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/54\/2011\/04\/daff1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"448\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-report-this\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/tajohnson?moderation_action=report_form&object_type=post&object_id=701&width=250&height=300\" class=\"thickbox\" title=\"Report This Post\">Report This Post<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There\u2019s a place I go once or twice a year that holds a big piece of my heart. It\u2019s a beautiful place, high on a hill near the mountains in Gunma. An almost complete 360 degree panorama of mountains, rivers, villages, rice fields and cities spreads out below. At the center of this place is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":706,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Another Place - matcha with me...<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/blogs.covchurch.org\/tajohnson\/2011\/04\/10\/2-place\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Another Place - matcha with me...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There\u2019s a place I go once or twice a year that holds a big piece of my heart. 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