The Lonely Grave of Hagbarth Bue
Back in my college in Northfield, Minnesota, I discovered a small cemetery one day while jogging through the arboretum. Occasionally, I’d return to stroll through. One bright fall afternoon a gravestone caught my eye. It wasn’t the newest or the oldest, the most ostentatious or the most drab. The name, however, stopped me in my tracks:
HAGBARTH BUE
The name rolled easily off the tongue, yet escaped the lips as gibberish. It carried a strangeness to me devoid of its Norwegian origins. The first name only two syllables but three times longer than the abrupt, monosyllabic last name. Peculiar yet endlessly entertaining to my ear, it inspired so many questions.
Who was Hagbarth? Was the name unique, passed down from Hagbarth to Hagbarth in the Bue lineage? Or was it a popular name once? There could have been at least seven Hagbarths in the city alone. How many Hagbarths were there in the tri-county area? In Minnesota? More importantly, what happened to the name since Mr. Bue was laid to rest in his hometown? Did Hagbarth not decide to pass on his name to one of the Bue children? Were none deserving of the name Hagbarth Jr? And what of the Bue grandchildren?
I could see one of the young Bue grown into a man, looking endearingly over his wife’s shoulder at their newborn child. He sticks his finger near its grasping hands, the babe squirming in yet-to-be-comfortable clothing and air. His wife looks up at him.
“Have you thought of a name?”
“I have” He replies, somewhat reluctant as the tiny hand clutches his finger with reassuring strength.
His wife smiles.
“Don’t worry, Honey. I know how much you loved him. I think Hagbarth is the perfect name for him”
The new father smiles back. “I just wish he was around to see his grandchild. Darn that wheat thresher! Darn it to heck!”
“We all miss Hagbarth, Honey. But you have to forgive that wheat thresher. We all do.”
But this isn’t how it happened. A Google search of the name returned no more Hagbarths in Minnesota. Hagbarth Bue attended one year of St. Olaf College in 1902, never graduating. Did he ever leave Northfield? Was he embarrassed by his academic failings? Did he take his shame out on his children, inspiring them to further their own education so they could one day set off for better things, leaving Hagbarth and his name to end up alone beneath a Northfield gravestone a month after his 101st birthday?
For now, I don’t know. I’m far away from Northfield, far from college, and far from the weather-worn grave of Hagbarth Bue. But in my room at home there was an etching, made with haste the day before I graduated at the end of an unseasonably warm Minnesota spring.
I took my family to see the grave of Hagbarth Bue, to say goodbye to a unique mystery and minor amusement from college. Taking paper and a pencil to it, I scratched the name onto the sheet, knowing that I had to take the mystery away with me. My family thought it was an unusual name but they never truly understood the mystery of Hagbarth as I envisioned it.
No matter.
Though born in different times, in different circumstances, and with much different monikers, I will always carry the idea of Hagbarth Bue with me.
It’s not a name you easily forget.
