Searching for Inspiration in a Cemetery

Alex pulled into the cemetery, and I acted like the inspired tour guide at our latest stop. “Here it is!” Alex’s Polish relative in the backseat took it all in. This place whispered inspiring stories of strength and endurance; I was sure of it—if only the tombstones could talk.

Aunt Hania’s tombstone might be telling a different story. “If only you could have cleaned up those dead flowers.”

Two summers ago, we planted flowers in Aunt Hania’s memory. Brimming with good intentions to water them—intentions that had probably wilted into a botanical crime scene.

Those intentions bloomed again with Zuzia’s visit, hoping to reignite Aunt Hania and her legacy.

I fondly remember visiting Aunt Hania. Stepping into her apartment was like entering a museum. The bookshelves reflected her late husband’s academic yearnings, and globe-trotting souvenirs scattered like treasure.

As worldly as she was, Aunt Hania seemed keen on learning about our lives. Our conversations felt like hugs for your soul.

Time spent with her seemed to stretch and reshape itself. The cuckoo clock lured us to stay past the hour. The flowers that we brought her invited us to sit down for tea. Her colorful Polish tea set connected us to her love for life, people, and heritage.

This was a connection that Aunt Hania kept even in death. She requested that her ashes be flown from Poland to the States. Ten years ago, we had a small funeral for her in the log cabin chapel on the cemetery grounds.

Discovering Inspiration in Unexpected Ways

We rounded the corner and came upon Aunt Hania’s grave, and I froze, stunned. Her grave was pristine—immaculate even. One of many inspiring stories of care and attention.

I breathed in that moment of peace. “Alex, we’ve got to thank that groundskeeper.”

Yet, the groundskeeper didn’t touch that peculiar red fixture. What’s it doing there? It had baffled us for years.

Zuzia shed light on the mystery, connecting us to a piece of Poland and its enduring legacy. It’s a lantern with a candle in it.

Unfortunately, time and weather had taken their toll on the red lantern. It wouldn’t open anymore, and we couldn’t reach the candle inside.

We headed toward the church complex next to the cemetery, hoping to find a gift shop. Inside those sprawling hallways, we wandered deeper and stumbled upon a museum that felt entirely out of place.

Glass cases filled with priest vestments lined the linoleum floors, and Zuzia and Alex went to check it out.

Dodging the museum, I meandered down the hall and came upon a new entrance. It was a different view of the same museum.

Across the way, I could see four of them talking animatedly. I abandoned my search for the gift shop and joined them. Little did I know what I was walking into.

Inspiring Stories: A Stranger’s Piece of Poland

The stranger speaking to Alex welcomed me with a smile. “Are you Polish too?”

“No,” I replied, expecting the conversation to end once she learned I had no Polish stories or punt to Alex, who has plenty of family stories of his own.

Only it was the beginning of her story. Born in Eastern Poland at the end of World War II, Russia invaded. Her parents were sent to Siberia, and she grew up orphaned in Russian territory.

At 18, she was old enough to fight to reclaim her Polish identity. It was a fight worth fighting. She returned to Polish soil and was reunited with her family.

To start a new life together, they moved to the U.S. Only, her mother passed away at 49 years old of cancer. Her life was full of inspiring stories.

Stunned, I couldn’t speak. What do you say about her resilience in surviving and overcoming such tragedies? I didn’t want to undermine her story by saying the wrong thing.

Embracing Inspiration & Finding Peace

In the moment’s stillness, she found the words to ask, “How did you two meet?”

I smiled and said, “We sat beside each other on an airplane.”

She countered my story by explaining how she ran into her husband at Grand Central Station. He hadn’t been as annoyed as he pretended to be—later, he tracked her down in Queens through her mother. And as they say, the rest is history.

That woman’s story of resilience touched me. I asked her, “Can I give you a hug?” Alex felt the same need to hug her, too. That hug wrapped us in an unspoken understanding of shared humanity.

And would you believe—she thanked us for listening to her story.

What a story we heard! She had a way of making us lose track of time and forget what we were looking for—the gift shop, of course.

We left the museum and the gift shop right across—it wasn’t as hard to find as we had thought, even as dazed as we were. Somehow, we found the lanterns in the back of the room.

There, we chose two beautiful white lanterns. We’d light one for the piece of Poland’s endurance we found that day and the other for the peace of all those souls.

We returned to the gravesite with a new piece of Poland in our hearts, a bit changed. We lit the candles, and a quiet peace settled over us under the soft glow of the lanterns.

These small acts carried profound weight, connecting the past, present, and all the hearts tied to them. Like hugging a stranger, it was a moment that didn’t need words—a moment of finding resilience in peace and words in silence. That day was filled with inspiring stories from unexpected places.