Madison Family Cemetery

At Montpelier, the home of President James Madison, in Orange, Virginia.
This stone was in the family cemetery located near the site of the family’s original home to which they relocated from the Tidewater area in the early 18th Century.

That January afternoon, the rays of the setting winter sun highlighted the message that has endured long after the names on the monument lost their association with the loving, callous-handed people buried there.

Maybe that is what they intended.

Maybe that’s why I admire them. In a time when social media was literally carved in stone, here is their text message that endures with relevance, two hundred years later.