|
January 21, 1952
Magnolia Cemetery
Meridian, Mississippi
Today we buried my stepmother, Elizabeth Parker—“Lizzie” to family and friends. The quiet graveside service gave no hint of the sorrow, the grief, and the suspicion that gripped our family over forty years ago. As we stood beside the grave, my heart ached; not because of her death, but because of memories of seven babies: my half brothers and sisters, buried long ago in Lockhart Cemetery.
It seems only yesterday that we laid Papa to rest here in Magnolia Cemetery. I had wanted to bury him in Lockhart in the Parker family plot with the rest of the family, but Lizzie would not agree. She said that she wanted him here, not ten miles away, so that she could come and put flowers on his grave. But the truth, I believe, is that she did not want to ever return to the Lockhart Cemetery. To my knowledge, she has not stepped foot in that cemetery since the last of her seven children was buried there over forty years ago. In fact, I don’t think she has even been to Lockhart since then.
Lockhart: the little community where I was born and where I lived the first twenty-four years of my life. A place filled with memories, both wonderful and tragic.
Seven babies. All of her children buried in a sad row in Lockhart Cemetery, buried beside my mother. And here in Meridian, their mother and our father are buried among strangers! I still can’t understand it. Lizzie wanted no part in the memory of those little angels, not even in death. For the past forty years it has been as if the twenty years before that, the twenty years of having babies and watching them die, did not even exist.
Only in the past two or three years had she begun to speak of her little angels. And it seems that recently, as her mind and health began to fail, she became obsessed with their lives and deaths; nothing else seemed to be on her mind. Only a few months ago, while my nephew, Arthur, and his family were visiting, Lizzie spoke more about those babies than I had heard her speak in years.
I remember Lizzie rocking Arthur’s six-week-old daughter and saying, “Ollie, isn’t Merrie a beautiful baby? She looks a lot like Stephen did. You remember him, don’t you? He was my first born, a beautiful little boy. When he got sick and died, I felt like the world had come to an end. I just wanted to die, too.
“And then Timothy. Ollie, you remember Timothy, too, don’t you? He was my second child. When he died, again I wanted to die with my baby.
“After Timothy, there was Hugh, and Roger, then my two precious girls, Eugenia and Elizabeth, and the last one was Alton. All of them. Beautiful little angels, all gone. All buried in Lockhart Cemetery.
“It got to where I knew they wouldn’t last. Like God had cursed me, never to see my babies grow up. It was so hard to love when I expected death to come. And, Ollie, I still hurt so badly when I think about my little babies. Time, even forty years, hasn’t taken away the pain.”
I remember Lizzie held Arthur’s baby close and began to cry.
How did our family bear so much pain and heartache? And even worse, how did we bear the suspicion and mistrust that ultimately consumed us?
Lizzie is now gone, and this chapter in the life of my family closes. But to this day, I still wonder about the deaths of my little brothers and sisters. And with her death, the truth may have also died; we may never know what really happened to those babies.
And now, let me tell you the story of my family and the Angels of Lockhart.
|
