Why I Like Cemeteries

There are 3 things I like about cemeteries.

1. They are quiet.  

2. There is always some place to sit. 

3. They remind me of the transcience of life.

When I travel I am always happy to find a cemetery to wander around in and spend some hours in. Some of my travelling companions have been less than keen to join me in this activity, calling it morbid or even weird.  I tell those particular souls that I will meet them at 7 for dinner or something similar.  I do not like to give up my cemetery wanderings for those who don't appreciate them. I relish my time with those travellers through life who are now resting on the quiet side.

Under shelter, facing some, facing away from others, just like life

 

 

Sometimes there are a wealth of seating options



Thanks Mum!

 

There was a time when I sought out the gravestones of young men, who generally died in war or on the high seas.  Of young women too, often in childbirth.  I was especailly interested in the length of time their respective wives and husbands, girlfriends and boyfriends, fiancés and fiancées, had to spend in the land of the living before joining their lover. Of course I am quite sure their parents and sibings suffered sorrow at these deaths as well, but it would have been quite a different kind of sorrow. 

 

Over the years I gradually gravitated towards those who had lived particularly long lives.  I acknowledged their achievement and looked for commonalities, but they were as random as the birthdates noted in stone.  No secret ingredient to learn and live by and write a book about. 

 

For some reason I have most recently been struck by the gravestones noting the passing of a child, most of which die within their first year, victims of epidemics, poor hygiene or limited resources to feed and look after these tiny bodies with their immature immune systems. 

Victorian gravestones are often clinical to these wee babes, and it is clear that this child was one of many, given some of their names (Septimus, Octavius, Decimus).  Sometimes there are more than one young body being mourned, with a list of names on one stone.  Oddly to me and to modern times, there is more than one occurence of the same name on the same stone, such as William or Henry, or Robert.  I imagine these were the heirs  designed to carry the family fortune and the father's name, and as one heir died another replaced him, identical in name and identical in fate, alas.  The Victorians loved their hyperbole, and large urns with draped fabric or weeping angels were stone accompaniments, many now overgrown with ivy, overwhelming the small rectangular space. 

in the dark, this would look like a giant ghost!

Some are fenced in ironwork, both young and middle-aged and old, and with weeds growing where a gardener can't mow, isolating their inhabitants even further   Is there a metaphor in this?  So many things left unsaid, feelings unknown because of societal or personal barriers to open communication.  Unfortunatly another product of Victorian times that remains today for many.  The barriers may be of their own making, but it is still sad to think of comfort and truth and perhaps love denied forever.    

The more modern gravestones of children are small and sentimental, carved with verses culled from favourite poems and pop songs, and with the tender voice of longing and sadness.  They are clustered together, as family plots are no longer common.  Parents must be buried elsewhere or not at all, leaving this small marker of their genetic line.  It's rather nice to think these little ones may console each other by their proximity.  The observer is in no doubt how much these children are loved and missed, still, as fresh and faded flowers are placed on sites created years past.  The gravestones themselves are not the traditional rounded shape, but rather sleeping angels, lambs, fairies and teddy bears.

It is particularly heartbreaking to see slowly decomposing plush animals or toy trucks and dolls placed there.  Favourite playthings perhaps, or maybe a token for the afterworld, much as the ancient Egyptians buried food and jewellery and other items that were thought to be required to get on in the great hereafter.  

 

With apologies to Pere laChaise in Paris and the wonderful one in Punta Arenas, Chile, I do think England has the most satisfying cemeteries of all.  After an hour or so of wandering I sit on an inevitalby well located bench and contemplate the meaning of life. 

Then my stomach rumbles and I rise, off to return to the  land of the living, that much more grateful that I am still among them.  It's always good to be reminded.