My Mother Remembered

The feelings I had when they buried my mother, thirty-two years ago, today.

In Loving Memory of
Florence H. B. Williams
December 6, 1993: Buried
Screven, Georgia's Colored Cemetery

My Mother Remembered

December 6, 1993, was a Monday, it was the 340th day of the year, and it became a day etched into my heart forever, the day my mother, Florence H. B. Williams, was laid to rest.

Today, December 6, 2025, carries the weight of that memory, thirty-two years ago, when my mother was buried in Screven, Georgia's Colored cemetery. The turnout was immense, almost as huge as the sorrow that gripped my heart while they lowered her remains into that deep, deep hole in the ground.

The moment that broke me was not when they lowered her body, it was when they began closing that hole, sealing the reality of her absence, and forcing acceptance where I was not ready to yield. My God, what agony, what despair, what a moment in my life, a moment that time has never taken away, even though it has softened the sharpness of the pain.

Before her passing, she shared a truth so profound that it has guided my grief ever since. She said,

"You will not be burying me, but the vessel that housed my spirit, and that allowed me to exist, my spirit and the essence of me will no longer reside in that vessel, be kind to it, it was kind to me!"
Her vessel found its resting place, and I am finally finding peace with where it lies. She rests in the "Colored" cemetery tucked within the woods, surrounded by nature, resting quietly, not alone, but among her relatives, right beside her brother, Randolph Brown. She would be pleased, she would be comforted, she would be at peace, knowing her vessel rests where her history, her family, and her legacy converge.

Her presence is not lost; it is transformed, living in memory, in bloodlines, in the lessons she left behind, and in the spirit that refused to be encased by earth.

Ms. Florence lives on through every single life that she had the pleasure of touching.

Forever Loved, Forever Missed, Forever Present. December 6, 2