Memento Mori

The old, childish fear of places like this has long since been buried with those beneath you at the young age of 8. Now all that remains is the sweet comfort of the silent and buried dead. Gone is the youthful dread, the innocent anxiety, leaving only a nostalgic aftertaste in the morning air. There is no loss for you to find here, no grief to bemourn or dearly departed to sit with in silence, for here are perfect strangers only acquainted with you in death. And so you greet them. You spare a kind word or a nod, and carry yourself down the path. The garden of headstones lines the walk, weathered with time’s ever present arm pressing down upon the hands of the watch and picking judiciously at the spread. Eternally filed away into rows and columns. The hallways of crumbling stone watch silent and comforting in their solid presence. Spreading oaks stand as the ever-stoic sentries of a keen eye as they sway in a peaceful breeze down the pathways as far as the eye can see. Moss seeps and tumbles down porous headstones, seeking a home between etched names and dates and prayers.

          Every footstep that meets the ground contains the memory of those who have walked the very same path, as their grief is left to wear and warp between the fingers of time into the serene present. The wind begins to blow. At the front, younger graves of simpler and smoother stone lie unburdened by the pockmarks of age, new black monoliths towering over the simpler gravestones. The youthful resign to the ancient as the graves begin to tiptoe back through time. Soft, caring breezes blow through your hair, filled with just the slightest amount of chill to invoke the need for a jacket. Fingers curl into sweaters and fold into pockets, feet stroll through the landscape of grasses and weeds. Swirling swathes of ivy blanket those below, sharply pointed leaves glisten with sparkling drops of morning dew. A beetle tramps on many legs over strawberry bushes blooming with young and bitter fruit. Eternally fenced behind burnished iron, never to be graced by the hands of the living since its planting by the dearly departed’s father or mother or lover. Starbursts of minuscule flowers, ivory white shot through with purple veins, snake through the gaps in the gently spiked leaves. Particulate ants send out feeling legs over arching stone and crumbling bark. 

        Down the passage of spongy and damp loam, step over the ivy carefully, don’t disturb their rest. An angel's wings spread in comfortable lament over you. The feathered grace of rebirth and resurrection, the virtuous wisdoms and mercies of heaven encapsulated in stone, divinity to stand watch for all of time. A step further. A willow whose branches will never feel the touch of a breeze sway in carved solitude over words in a language you don’t understand, above years that transcend the written word. Sorrow and mourning transformed into eternally posed leaves reaching towards a nonexistent ground, the stony representation of loss suffered. Sweet silence breaks into soft murmuring of the living trees, whispering holy hymns of bygone ages in the rustle of their leaves. Crows converse between fluttering wings in the forgotten script of the caw and of the chitter. The cool air whips through your hair, bringing with it the bubbling chill of a past forgotten and a past remembered as your footsteps meet the brambles. The dead rest beneath that layer of foliage in an eternal state of grace beneath the earth, cloistered and secreted away under the soil, as that is their home, their hearth. Curvaceous headstones and stolid pillars, mausoleum gates and lamenting angels. Trees shed verdant leaves on the path that carries on for an eternity, ivy clings to splintering bark. Growth sweeps over the graves, as the dirt is left undisturbed for the ages to pass it by.

 Clouds bloom overhead, grays tumble through deeper blues, bringing the soulful aroma of the oncoming storm. Make your way back to the front now and step gingerly around the stones, don’t disturb their rest. The place beneath your ribs, the place between your heart and your lungs hums with the murmur of tranquility. Gifts left for the dead jingle in the breeze. Small lanterns of jewel toned lights, small stones atop the flat edges of the grave markers, coins of a foreign currency tossed amongst the pebbles. A famous writer is left for the ages beneath the soil, yet is not forgotten by those who walk the endless path. They leave stones and flowers and tokens for the site of his resting place, mementoes to last him until the new wave of visitors appear. There he will lie in the long-lasting adoration of those who have read his words and pass by along their journey.

 A conjoined grave lies at the north side of the cemetery. Two etched names, two rings interlocked, two lives intertwined intrinsically and sacredly. The ring: eternity bound. A love marked immortal in stone, within the place the soul leaves behind and cloistered in a sepulcher of dirt and stone and wood. A crow lands upon the grass, scratching at the soil.