I took a left off of a small North Virginia road and headed west to a “don’t blink or you’ll miss it” town called Orleans. Many of the store fronts had long been boarded over and the homes were old. Really old. And the trees were even older and you could tell that the roots ran deep in these parts. When Brooke and Manny suggested the century old church and cemetery as the sight for their engagement session I was a bit taken aback. A cemetery? Really? Awkward, yet awesome in an awkward kind of way. Even though I initially had my reservations in the beginning, the moment I pulled into the dirt drive and stepped out into the warm, summer Virginia air I took one look around it hit me like a rock. Well, more like a tombstone.

The church itself was amazing. A single white structure sitting on a lonely hill, it was surrounded by Virgina pine shade and somewhere in the distance the sounds of an untuned steel guitar mixed with the lofty voices of a Sunday morning revival filled with the Holy Ghost. I crossed the yard and into the cemetery and couldn’t help but notice the name and date on a moss covered stone in the shape of Celtic cross. Frank O’Callaghan. April 27, 1847 to March 23, 1863. He was just 16 years old when the Civil War took his life. What a waste. The yard was surrounded by a beautiful stone fence that stood solid in some places and leaned in others but was obviously built with great skill and precision, each stone shaped and fitted into its perfect place among the others. Brooke and Manny met me at the Celtic cross, Brooke in a vintage tan dress complete with her grandmother’s pill-box hat and Manny in a spiffy tweed pin stripe suit and tie that belonged to his grandfather. Certainly the Goodness is in abundance in Virginia.

We talked for a few moments. About life in general but more importantly about Brooke’s infatuation with the 1930’s. “I don’t know what it is about the 30’s” She said. “There’s just something about how even during the hard times people still found a way to be fashionable. To be beautiful even during a time called The Great Depression must have been quite the feat.

I smiled. I liked her way of thinking.

We spent a few moments walking through the yard, stopping here and there to read the engraving of those that came and went long before us. Long before the Green House effect, the Internet, and BP gushing millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf Coast. Back when people actually married for life and grew old together. Now I’m not suggesting it was easy by any means. Quite the contrary in fact. But families still ate supper together and children played in the streets and everyone needed everyone else.

The more time we spent in the cemetery the more aware I became of the symbolism of this place. The cemetery, the suitcase. What better way to mark the beginning of a long journey than the same place where you will one day hopefully end it. Together. Till death do you part.