What Remains

When I head out for my run, I usually follow the same familiar route through our quiet little countryside in Northwest Georgia. Just over a half mile from our house, I always pause at the same spot—a small cluster of trees standing in the middle of what is otherwise an open field. The farmer who cuts the hay in the field several times a year carefully maneuvers his tractor around these trees, leaving them untouched in their little island of shade. I can only speculate why he preserves this stand of trees and bushes.

One afternoon a few years ago, I trespassed, walking across that field to investigate. Pushing aside the undergrowth and branches, I discovered buried sheets of tin, ancient logs and weathered timbers slowly returning to the earth. The remnants told a story—there had once been a small dwelling here, perhaps just a shanty or shack, but it was someone’s home. Someone had called this little patch of ground their own, and had looked out from their doorway at the same rolling hills I see around me today. And the farmer who tends this land, I believe, can’t bring himself to cut down those trees because doing so would somehow erase the memory of whoever once lived there.

For my entire life, I’ve noticed quiet markers along highways and byways that whisper of lives once lived in places now vacant and void of life.

Sometimes it’s a lone chimney still standing tall amid bushy grass and volunteer trees, its bricks still holding their formation long after the house has disappeared. When I see these brick structures, I wonder about “the story.” Did fire claim the home that once surrounded them? Did the family escape safely, or does this chimney stand as a more somber memorial?

Other times, it’s beauty that catches my eye—yellow daffodils blooming wild beside the highway in early spring, or blue-purple spiderwort spreading in an unexpected place, or the cheerful chaos of forsythia growing where no one tends it anymore. I imagine the women who once planted these hardy perennials between their daily chores—hanging laundry, tending children, preparing chicken and dumplings and cornbread. These women chose flowers that would survive and multiply, and decades later, they’re still here, still blooming, still beautiful, though the gardeners are long gone.

Sometimes it’s practical remnants that grab my attention. A stonelined well standing in an empty field speaks of mornings long ago when someone lowered bucket after bucket, drawing up the precious water that sustained a family before the luxury of indoor plumbing. Or perhaps it’s a rusted car from the 1950s, slowly being reclaimed by honeysuckle, sumac, and poison ivy, telling the story of a family who parked the vehicle there continued from page

one day and simply walked away from a life that was no longer sustainable.

Even the weathered bones of an old tobacco barn or smokehouse, leaning but still standing, whisper the testimonies of people who are probably six feet under: “We were here. We worked this land. We survived. Remember us.”

These roadside markers are evidence of dreams pursued, families raised, and lives fully lived on small patches of God’s country. Each remnant represents someone’s everything: their shelter, their security, their hopes for the future.

But as I’ve pondered these silent witnesses to vanished lives, I’ve come to realize that I was only seeing part of the story. Yes, what remains might be a chimney, a foundation slab, a well, or a cluster of flowers. These physical traces matter, and they deserve our notice and respect.

But what truly remains isn’t found in the physical traces at all. What endures— what makes the farmer preserve those trees down the road and what makes me pause in reverence each time I run by— is something that can’t be touched or photographed or reclaimed by time. It’s the memory of the love that once filled the rooms, the laughter that echoed from the doorways, the memory of the hands that planted flowers and drew water and built homes where families could flourish. Long after the last chimney crumbles to the ground and the final daffodil fades, love remains, somewhere, somehow, forever and ever, amen.