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Candles In The Cemetery Still Burning

That video above is the Kickstarter clip produced by Jeremy Casella, a Nashville singer-songwriter raising money for his next album. He’s a friend of Dr. Tim’s sister — Dr. Tim from The Little Way Of Ruthie Leming — and conceived of the clip’s theme after reading the story of the candles in the cemetery, from […]

That video above is the Kickstarter clip produced by Jeremy Casella, a Nashville singer-songwriter raising money for his next album. He’s a friend of Dr. Tim’s sister — Dr. Tim from The Little Way Of Ruthie Leming — and conceived of the clip’s theme after reading the story of the candles in the cemetery, from Little Way. Here’s that portion of the book:

This year, Mam and Ruthie’s Christmas Eve tradition of lighting candles in the Starhill Cemetery would, sadly, be broken. Neither Mam nor Hannah had it within herself to continue. Mam told me she and Paw were planning to go to services at the Methodist church, and home to bed early. They didn’t feel up to coming by the Dreher family Christmas gathering at my cousin Andy’s place. They wanted to be alone, and quiet, with their grief.

Just after sunset, while Mam and Paw were at church, I drove out to their house to pick up some presents I had stored in Paw’s barn. Passing the Starhill Cemetery, I saw hundreds of pinpricks flickering in the darkness, like stardust sprinkled on the thick blanket of night. I guessed that Mam found the strength to uphold the tradition after all.

Half an hour later, I was having a drink in Andy’s living room when my mobile phone rang. It was Mam. She sounded distraught.

“Rod, did you see the cemetery?” she said.

“Yes, it was beautiful,” I said. “You did a wonderful job.”

“It wasn’t me baby,” she said, choking through her tears. “I don’t know who did it. Some kind soul lit the candles tonight. Oh, baby, whoever that was, they’ll never know what they did for me tonight. They’ll never, ever know.”

“My God, Mama, I don’t know what to say.”

“Honey, find out who did that, would you? I have to thank them.”

I told her I would do my best.

A few minutes later, Mam called back.

“It was Susan Harvey,” she said. “You remember her? Mr. Buddy Harvey’s daughter? She’s Susan Wymore now. She was the one who did it. Susan. Susan Harvey, God bless her. She will never, ever know what a gift she gave me tonight.”

In the years I had been away, Susan would call Mam to ask if she would like some help with the candles, but Mam always declined, telling Susan that she and Ruthie, and Ruthie’s girls, had everything covered. This year when Susan called to offer her help, Paw told her that Mam was too down to do it this year.

“I thought it was important to keep it going,” Susan told me when I called to thank her. Because Susan is older than I, we never knew each other growing up. But she and her sisters lived two fields over from Paw’s parents, who would welcome the Harvey girls into their little white wooden cottage. My grandmother gave them cookies and seeds for the birds. The Harvey girls’ older kinfolks, Willis, Fletcher and Romy, had helped my grandfather build that house by hand after the original cottage burned to the ground when Paw was a boy.

“In Starhill, everybody’s like family,” Susan told me. She remembered Ruthie as a little girl, going lickety-split across our yard in our orange Sears go-kart, pigtails flying behind her. What she had done with the candles was a sign of love and remembrance for our family, Susan said, but keeping that tradition going was also something she did for herself.

“My twins are buried in that cemetery,” she said. “The first year your Mom and Ruthie did this, they also put out little crosses made of antique nails. They put two crosses there for the twins, one for each one of them, even though they share a grave. The twins were stillborn, and a lot of people don’t know how to act around that. But your Mama and Ruthie, they put two crosses there. To me, that acknowledged that the twins were people. I never forgot what your mom did for me.”

“They’ve been dead 21 years,” Susan continued. “But you never know when you’re going to wake up one morning and it’ll feel like just yesterday.”

Jeremy says the songs on this album were inspired by N.T. Wright’s book, Surprised By Hope. I’m touched and honored that an artist in Nashville has made use of this story. If you want to support Jeremy Casella’s album project, click here.

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