Who Knows You?
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Some of the old New England graveyards are serene little pockets of neglect. Their slate tombstones lean at odd angles and the elegant calligraphy is barely legible, spelling out obscure colonial names like Ozias and Zebulon. Some of the inscriptions that can still be deciphered tell poignant stories of sons and husbands fallen in long-ago wars and young wives lost in childbirth.
Clusters of brick-sized stones mark the deaths of children in some catastrophic winter. The engraved cries of lament—“Farewell, Beloved Daughter”—evoke a tug of grief even now, though the people named have been dust and earth for two hundred years or more.
One of these graveyards in my town evokes a sadness of a different sort, held in the inscription on a modern tombstone marking the resting place of Franklin F. Bailey. He was born in 1901 and buried in 1988, so he lived a long time. His epitaph says , “Here lies a man that nobody really knew.”
What a strange message to leave echoing down through the years—and what a freight of sadness is held in that short phrase! It tells of isolation, loneliness, a life lived invisibly, a voice unheard. “Here lies a man that nobody really knew.”
Who knows you? We each move through the world caught within the bubble of our own mind, circling around each other like small planets on which each of us is the only citizen. Spiritual practices are meant to turn us directly into that inner landscape, so we can know it well and without illusion. But their larger purpose is to show us pathways to one another, because with practice we come to know a bedrock truth of this human life: However different each inner landscape is from the others, the same winds blow through us all. They are the winds of longing and fear, doubt, hope and regret. No one is exempt. That simple recognition opens a deep well of compassion, both for our own struggles and for those taking place behind all the faces that surround us.
I wonder about Franklin Bailey every time I take a walk through that little graveyard. I also wonder about the Franklin Baileys who walk among us. Who today is living a life of unremitting loneliness, in my town, in my neighborhood, perhaps even in my own family? Before it comes time for a sad epitaph summing up their isolation, perhaps we can extend a bridge of compassion, allowing them to feel seen, heard, and touched—to be known a little, in the brief, common walk of our lives.
From Shine and Shadow: Meditations, published by Skinner House in 2011. Available through the UUA bookstore or 800-215-9076.
- Who Knows You? - September 1, 2013
