Easter and the week preceding the day are busy times around my house. Our church has taken to having the preschool egg hunt on the Saturday before and even if I’m not there my duck-shaped shortbread cookies better be.  That’s a three day process that gets time-consuming toward the end.  It takes a while to ice three or four dozen ducks with a paint brush.  Yes, you read that correctly.

I’m also usually putting up the last of the Christmas stuff. Close your mouth and put your eyes back in your head.  It’s not scattered all over the house but neatly packed away and hidden in one of the bedrooms.  You see, I keep having this fantasy that I’m going to find someone who will build us this magnificent garage/storage facility so I don’t have to haul everything up the pull-down attic stairs . . . and come Easter I’m dragged back to reality.  So the stairs come down and the stuff goes up a box at the time.  This year I did five or six a night so it wasn’t as dreadful as it could have been.  I have a lot of Christmas stuff.  So it took a whole week of nights.

The kids (as in the adult kids originally and now the grandkids, too) always come over for our annual egg hunt with the eggs hidden inside the house. That way the weather doesn’t interfere and I don’t find chewed up plastic eggs scattered about the yard, compliments of the dogs.  The first year I suggested said hunt, and asked if there was any interest on the part of my adult children and their spouses, my son asked if there was money involved.  And thus began the tradition.  That’s another reason not to hide them all over the yard.  At least in the house I stand a chance of finding those left behind before the lawn mower does.

However, there are downsides to indoor egg hunts, especially if you own an abundance of cats. Easter couldn’t come in the fall or winter when they’re growing more fur.  Oh, no.  It has to be in the spring when they’re shedding their winter coats.  Although the cats do not permanently reside in the house, they’re in enough that a thorough vacuuming is required before any company arrives.  That’s definitely necessary when you’re hiding eggs everywhere so no stone, or stuffed animal, or blanket, or decorative pillow is left unturned.

By the time the day—and the week—are over, I’m pretty well shot as far as being functional. My body is frazzled and my brain isn’t too far behind.  And my internal clock is a mess since my whole system has gone into overdrive trying to get everything done that I think needs to happen.  Granted, probably no one else would care if they found the occasional wad of cat hair (ok, maybe they would care about that, depending upon where they found it) or the Christmas stuff was still stacked in the bedroom.  A lack of duck cookies, however, would probably be considered a travesty.

So when the day is over and we’ve eaten our Easter supper at the local Mexican restaurant and I’ve delivered my grandsons home and played for a while, I have one more stop to make before ending the day. Most people might be soaking in the bathtub or vegetating on the couch in a daze.

I’m headed to a cemetery. Savannah Cemetery, to be exact.

There is a sense of peace there that I cannot begin to explain, a sense of permanence that no bulldozer is going to destroy and no man-made structure is going to displace. I can wander ‘mongst the graves and commune with those whose spirits have long since left this earth.  I can read the words lovingly carved in the stones that mark their resting places and come to an understanding of how great their loss really was.  Here time means nothing; it has stopped for those whose bodies have made this their earthly abode, and for me it slows to a crawl.

For centuries the burial grounds of our ancestors have been considered sacred and those who desecrate those sites evil. When you walk those grounds in the quiet of the evening you can understand why and there is a peace that begins to flow through you, replacing all that has been hurried and hectic.  It is at that moment—as the sun settles into the trees and the world grows still—that you realize the brevity of life and how precious the memories are that you leave behind.

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