A bad case of the winter blues blew the door shut behind me as I slid into the driver’s seat. It was one of those afternoons when everything just feels wrong and a directionless sadness sits in your gut like the sludge at the bottom of a cup of hot cocoa. Nothing was really wrong and I knew it, but I couldn’t help wishing, as the engine roared to life, that I could go home, crawl into bed, and get the day over with.
You know how some days you just aren’t feeling it? It was one of those. I had just finished up a couple of interviews in a little town an hour or so away from home and had no reason in the world to be in a funk. And yet, there I was, funky as a teenage boy’s socks.
I pulled up my map app and looked for the long way home. This girl needed some country drive therapy. A little north of town lay a covered bridge that, as it turned out, wasn’t as interesting as I’d hoped. But just beyond it I came across something Ripley’s Believe It or Not discovered years before me: a tiny cemetery, smack dab in the middle of a three-way intersection.
It was one of those triangles made when a rural road joins another at a bend. I almost drove on past, but the spot spoke to me. Besides, I love cemeteries. The licheny headstones, the fading letters and numbers, the whispers of past days and ordinary lives and long ago loves, it all resonates with my soul.
The Culbertsons once farmed the land from here to the river, a helpful sign said, the same sign that noted the spot’s brush with Ripley fame as “The Cemetery in the Middle of the Road.” Knee-high stones and a few tall spires mark the final resting place of 20-some Culbertsons and the extended family they thought worthy of sharing their little piece of land.
James Culbertson, born in Ireland in 1802, was in his 20s when he married Charity Ludwig in Pennsylvania. The happy couple somehow found their way to rural southern Michigan, where they died in their 60s.
In between, they raised 11 children, farmed, did laundry, watched the river and listened to the sandhill cranes winging overhead. They gossiped about faraway news of the state capital's move to Lansing and Abraham Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation. Charity, bless her heart, endured the nickname “Chesty,” according to the stone that’s the last physical testament to her life.
Modern obituaries tell you in years how old someone was when they died. Gene Allen Hackman, 95. James “Jimmy” Earl Carter Jr., 100. John David Riddle, 70.
Those seven days snagged at me as I wandered among the stones.
Seven days don’t amount to much.
And yet, when someone tallied up Samuel Culbertson’s life, they decided that those seven days were worth counting.
We can’t number our days as we live them. Often, we hardly notice as they slip out from under our feet, evaporating into the wind as we trudge ever forward toward an engraved number on a stone. It’s today, and then suddenly it’s next week, next month, next year. Seven days are a breath. Inhale, exhale, and they’re gone.
But, mightn’t we make them count?
Don’t get me wrong ― I do not propose that we all go out and perform heroic acts and live Larger than Life and change the world. Live bold sometimes, if you like, but not every day. Nobody can sustain that.
But that’s not the only kind of day worth counting. I suspect, if you asked him, that Samuel Culbertson wouldn’t wish away any of his 21 years, three months, and seven days.
All the days counted. Even the funky ones.
I’m not sure the secret to holding on to our days. But I think maybe it lies in seeing them as they’re happening and accepting them as they come. And maybe in remembering that, at some point, they run out.
I hope that when Samuel turned 21, he said what he wanted to say and did what was important to do and let his heart be full. I hope he made his days count before they got counted.
Maybe today’s a sludgy day for you. Maybe your funk is as chunky as curdled milk. I’m sorry. Days like that happen sometimes, and they’re hard.
But they count. They all count. Today is a part of your story, whatever kind of day it may be.
As I type this, a kitten’s sleepy head lies on my hands, bobbling with the rhythm of my keystrokes. Wind, heavy and thick, sounds like winter as it jostles the tree branch outside the window. My feet are cold.
Breathe in, breathe out.
Today counts.
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Writer and blogger Tim Urban changed the way I spend my days and weeks, at least when I remember to think about it. He makes complicated and important issues simple, and I think he’s funny and wise. He also swears more than some people are comfortable with, so just a heads up on that.
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A couple of people lately have asked how my book project is coming along, which is nice of them. More than a year after the first deadline I set myself to finish my book proposal, I am…still working on the proposal. Sigh. It’s a honking big document, 50 pages or so, that has to convince a publisher they will make money by publishing your book. I just want to write the darn thing, but this is part of the process for a serious nonfiction book, so I keep at it. I also do paid work as a freelance writer and editor, and that work sometimes takes up all my brain space. I sometimes think -- OK, I often think -- that I should just chuck the book idea altogether. But then I get riled up again about this idea in my head and I know I need to say it, so I keep going.
Anyway, there’s your little update. I’ll give you another one when the proposal is done, and when an agent picks it up, and when a publisher green lights the project. Huzzah, and all that.
