The past month has flown by and been a busy one. Quite a bit of time was devoted to securing housing for Paige for next year…she ended up signing a lease for a (very nice) apartment with a few friends. She is very excited about not living in a dorm next year, and having her own bedroom and bathroom. She also managed a quick trip home for The weekend in the middle of month so she could get her hair done (and her laundry😏).

  
 
As usual, she also kept me updated with all her news…including very happy news. She is officially no longer a freshman. 

Clay has also been busy with school, and work, and research…

I had my training with World Relief, to help a refugee family, and now I am waiting to be assigned a family. 

Tim and I had a spur of the moment, empty nester weekend getaway to Savannah…and it was wonderful. I took lots of photos, because Savannah, even in January, is beautiful. We walked along the river and watched the tugboats go past and walked through the city market and window shopped. We had fabulous, delicious meals. We went on the hop on, hop off trolley tour and meandered around Forsyth Park and listened to musicians and admired the stately old mansions, and we found the Mercer-Williams House (from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil).

   
    
  
   
  
On the way out of Savannah we decided to stop by the  Bonaventure Cemetery, which is also featured in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It was a dreary, overcast day and the cemetery was…absolutely perfect. I confess that I have a kind of “thing” for old cemeteries. I love to walk through them and read the tombstones and imagine the lives of the people that rest there. I find them beautiful.

Bonaventure was breathtaking. It is not manicured…there is a sort of wild, southern beauty to it. There are large old Live Oak trees everywhere, draped with Spanish Moss and Resurrection Ferns. I imagine in the springtime it is glorious, when all the Confederate Jasmine and Azaleas are blooming. But even in January it was gorgeous with Camellias blooming everywhere. The statuary was hauntingly beautiful. Some of the Angels were dis-colored on their faces and it looked as though they were weeping. 

Words cannot do this place justice, so I’ll let the photos speak for themselves. Even photographs aren’t enough though, really. If you ever have the opportunity, do go to Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah and walk through the magnificent 100 acres of peaceful, serene beauty. You won’t regret it. 

“But I never think about dead people. Looking at these old graves makes me think how generation after generation of the same family are all gathered together. And that makes me think about how life goes on, but not about dying. I never think about dying.” 

― John Berendt, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story