I have always liked cemeteries.
My earliest cemetery memories were from being a little kid attending the burial of my Uncle Bob and then my Grandma. Those were not good memories. I remember it being hot. I remember the priest droning on and on. I remember old people weeping. I wondered why they didn’t have tombstones. (I was told they had to be carved and installed at a later date). I watched men carry the casket from the hearse to the gravesite and thought someday I’d be a man and would be a pallbearer too.
Later, once the tombstones were in place, I’d visit the graves with my Aunt Essie. The stones were carved with my Grandma’s and Uncle Bob’s names, birthdays and death days. Nearby were the tombstones from their parents – whose dates seemed impossibly ancient.
I’d look around and see little American flags planted in the ground around many sites. Then there were the giant mausoleums, carved statues and little house-like structures that marked the sites of “famous or rich people”.
I found it fascinating.
A few years later, when I moved to Pittsburgh, we’d cut through the cemetery when walking to visit friends. There were winding paths and private roads to meander down while being sheltered from the noise, fumes and commercial traffic that was separated from the cemetery by stone walls, grass and trees.
I studied tombstones that were hundreds of years old. I read inscriptions that gave small hints about the death of a child, the love of a mother, a war hero’s death or a beloved elder.
I never felt like I was in a place of death. I felt like I was in a quiet, sacred place that held the life stories of people from long ago.
In high school, we’d hang out in one of the local cemeteries near my house. It was serene. There were giant trees and well maintained meadows. There were crypts and statues and tombstones hundreds of years old. Some of these were two stories high. Some appeared to be large enough to live in.
Others stones were so old they were black with soot, crumbling and barely legible.
We would sled ride down the empty hills in the cemetery and use the flat, wrought iron fenced field to play baseball. The caretaker didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he’d drive up to watch us play and let us know when we needed to leave because he was locking the gates for the night.
I’m a grown man now. I haven’t been to a cemetery for years. I have access to parks, lakes, greenways and neighborhoods to walk through. There are tiny historical cemeteries all around me. I think these were family plots that the developers had to preserve. In the woods behind one house, there is a wrought iron enclosed graveyard with a dozen small stones. Near the library, there’s another one. Behind the gas station is a third.
Just writing this got me thinking it’s time for me to visit a big old cemetery. It’s been too long.