Gather and Sow
by Paola Bresba
Family stories are carried along to each new generation through words. These words create the stories, songs, birth charts, family trees, maps that hold the whispers of lives.
(Violet Hazel – 1901 – 1958, Hilary Michael – 1903 - 1971). The life stories belonging to my mother’s family live not only in words but also in a land. The land witnesses the Kunz and Simons families who tend the soil, who plant and harvest. Deaths and births. The people work and live on the land, and in the land they are finally placed. Among the grasses is a field of souls; memorial stones lined up like the grain within the earth.
The children join the land in recounting the stories. But these accounts do not
live merely in the retelling, for the death dates are also the birth dates. “As
a grain of wheat must fall to the ground and die in order to bring life, so must
we die to be born to eternal life.” John 12:24
GATHER AND SOW is reprinted with permission of the author, Paola Bresba,
daughter of Mary Ann (Kunz) Bresba, and granddaughter of Hilary and Violet.
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Sherman Flat
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Combine
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Harvest
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Sherman Cemetery
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Sherman Cemetery: Coming Home In memory of Elizabeth Kunz, 1931 - 2005 |
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