I have a perhaps-slightly odd fascination with cemeteries: I have managed to live within walking distance of one in almost every place I’ve lived, and our current house is mere blocks from a huge, old one, so of course I’m in my element. Most people regard them as a necessary sort of evil, but I really love the proximity. It’s peaceful there, there are flowers to look at, and there are happy memories abound as people visit and talk to loved ones. I took Baxter there on some of his very first walks; I thought the dead people wouldn’t mind having a happy new soul frolic around them, and it was a safe place for him to get used to being outside without fear of running into any really scary stuff.
I think of it as like a meeting place for all these lives – more than anything for me, there is a sense of reverence and awe at these lives that all WERE, and then WEREN’T anymore. This became even more meaningful for me after we cremated and buried my mother in law – I visit her and my father in law regularly when I am in Victoria, and am reminded every time of the sacrifices they made for the life I enjoy now and the son they left behind.
I love looking at what stories the headstones tell – stretching some mathy muscles as I calculate age differences in couples ages, their ages at death and all that. My cemetary is in the original capital city of BC, so there are some very old graves there, and the spongy grass aside (I don’t like to think about that), this means that some of the people there have been so since the early 1800′s. Wow.
The saddest graves are the babies. I’ve seen some that didn’t even live for a day, and some that were only with us for a few months. So utterly sad. I always say a little prayer for them and hope they ended up somewhere nice. I tend to believe that we live over and over again and that when we die, our souls move onto the next person to live again, so I wonder if one of these souls will be born to me one day and I will recognize them a little. A little woo-hoo-out-there, I know…
I never feel afraid in cemeteries, I feel safe in them and protective of them – it’s a respectful place that represents peace and gratitude for me. Baxter and I head up a few times a week: we round the corner of the street and I say, “Let’s go visit the dead people, bud.” He wags his tail and tilts his head, happy to go for a few sniffs and a history lesson.
