My great grandfather, Charles Lane Dennis, came to this area in the 1870s - sometime after the Civil War. He and many other's from northeastern Tennessee and southwestern Kentucky came too. In fact, a passel of early settlers to this region hail from the same area and time. They came in search of land - a place to call their own and make their way, and the vast, young state of Texas held wonderful promise for what they sought.
Mr. Dennis farmed his entire life in this county and is buried in Melissa, TX. His eldest son, Thomas Van Dennis, or TV as he was called (long before those initials would mean anything electronic) married and followed suit, farming near a community known by old Doc Hubbard's country school - one named after his daughter - the 'Allah Hubbard School', and situated about 5 miles north east of Celina. TV was buried in the Old Celina Cemetery south and west of the town - and his wife, preceding him in death by 3 years, is buried beside him - but from here my story takes a twist.
My Dad, Delmer, was TV and Mattie's youngest child - number 13 of 14 - with the last child dying at birth. Dad's mother died when he was 5 and his father died 3 years later, when my Dad was 8. That was in 1933, and TV, Mattie and their baby girl lay in the family plot alone for many years, or until, 1989. That's when my Dad, at his request, was buried there.
Now B and I don't like to talk about death, but roots are roots, so that we've said that this is where we'll be laid to rest when our times comes. Till that times comes we've been know to occasionally pay the cemetery a visit. So that when the Parker's (as I drove them about looking for a place to bury their father and husband) were saying things to me like, "Dad wouldn't like this," and "Pastor, David was really a misplaced country boy at heart," the Old Celina Cemetery came to mind. When we pulled onto the cemetery grounds, walked across my ancestors graves, and west up a little rise to the newer part of the cemetery, the family sighed and said, 'this is it!"
Of course those of us in Christ know that David is already with Jesus. His salvation has been made - and he is with the LORD - for to be 'absent from the body' is to be 'present with the LORD.' But the Bible also teaches that one day the graves of all believers will open - and those who are 'asleep and remain' (the bodies of those passed on) will rise up out of their graves clothed with "new bodies' to live forever with Christ (1st Cor, 15 and 1st Thess 4). And, oh my! What a grand day that will be!
So my deacon chair and I, one Mr. David Shaw Parker, should the LORD tarry, will one day rise up from that spot in Collin County Texas - along with all the other saints in Christ from around the world - and "so shall we ever be with the LORD."
So that, "Yes, the place is not quite Buffalo Gap, nor is it Abilene" but it is Celina, Texas. And from this place in Celina, God will one day call him finally home.
Till then we shall remain
Pastor Sam
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