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The Death of a Gravestone


What happens when a gravestone dies?
When time wears away at granite or marble for countless years?
What happens when stone turns to dust?
When solid structures crumble to be scattered by the wind?
What happens when a gravestone dies?
Is some poor, disembodied soul left to wander the earth?
Is some great hero forgotten by a world that lives on? 
Are the normal thrust into obscurity, never to be remembered?
Are the evil held equal with the good in some vast conglomeration existing only in the past?
What happens when a gravestone dies?
Does man become pages in a book?
Does a life, free and unique and real, become lost in the annals of history?
What happens to the great?
Are they remembered?
What becomes of their legacy when stone stands against time no longer?
What becomes of the simple miracle?
The small life of a man, that changed the life of another?
What happens when a gravestone dies?
I think it is up to us.
The world must choose to see the unending complexity of human memory,
And hold it to be a better reminder than that which marks a man's burial site. 
So that it matters not, what happens to a gravestone when it dies, 
But what happens to a soul, when it is forgotten.
 
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ShawnMcCullough

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