A Walk Through The Cemetery

Commonplace Newsletter #66

I find myself, once again, seeking the silent company of the dead. That sounds morbid, I know. In a world where the denial of death is one of the few threads that truly unites us, to knowingly seek out reminders of mortality is seen as strange. But the modern city- even one as small and provincial as mine- is a noisy place, all clamour and engine revs and the dopplering of too-loud conversations, and so quiet must be sought and cultivated. Hence the cemetery and the seeking of the silence that can only be found in the places where the departed rest.

Now of course it’s easy to swaddle yourself in sounds of your own making, it’s easy to cut out the unwanted intrusions of daily life via headphones and soundproofing and stay-at-home digital device based introversion. This for many is what passes for quiet time. But that’s not what I’m talking about, that’s not what I am after. To block out, to avoid, is one thing, but to deliberately and intentionally seek refuge is quite another. Kafka once said that if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres, and a regular stroll to the cemetery is one of the foundations of my manoeuvring towards inner calm.

And so here I sit on a simple wooden bench by the north entrance gate of the cemetery, hood up to the drizzle that threatens to turn into real rain, listening to the sounds of nothing much at all. I can see why one of the many carved euphemisms for the extinction of a human life is ‘being at peace’. Because this is all very peaceful, this fenced off liminal space of bowing headstones and sheltering trees and stone angels, the crowns of their heads and forearms green with moss.

It’s a sanctuary of sorts this place and if the cemetery in question doesn’t hold the remains of loved ones then it does not have to be a sorrowful place. Yes there will always be a shade of sorrow to grounds such as these- especially when the circuit of pathways leads you past the section devoted to the children, past those small plastic windmill tributes that never seem to spin no matter how strong the breeze is kicking up. Such things stop you in place with their sadness, as does the new penny sheen of the headstones and the teddy bears with their dampened fur and heads bowed low, as if they too can grieve.

But there is more than tragedy here. The cemetery holds trees, flowers, magpies, lichen, ivy and curious, playful squirrel who know nothing of mortality or decorum. I watch one balance atop a headstone for a long minute with something reddish in his claws. He tries to bite into it, to smash the morsel open on the granite before giving in and casually discarding his find to continue his forage along the wet grass and then up to the high branches.

Could they talk I suspect that the dead beneath me and all around me would agree that the little fellow was charming and that more of mortal life should be spent carefully attending to such fleeting moments.

Because above all this is what many of our lives miss and this is what the cemetery offers- perspective. It’s easy to get wrapped up in all of your plans and aspirations and regrets and neuroses but when you walk these quiet paths and see these silent rows of tilting stones everything else dims down. You don’t panic Scrooge-like as you imagine your own name carved into the marble, not usually, but you do realise that life holds but one guarantee. And as you walk around you see that people do not have their status carved into the stone, nor their net worth, nor the vast majority of the earthly accomplishments that they spent their years striving towards. None of that makes it here. You have your name, the day you began, the day you ceased to be and a few words of what you meant to those who remain. That’s it. And that’s enough.

The writers tragedy is that everything truly worth saying exists at the edge of words, if not beyond them entirely. This is what the headstones tell us and this is why they become more eloquent the more they fade and why they grow taller in our imagination the further they sink into the swallowing earth.

As I come close to completing my circuit of the grounds I see two headstones close together. They lean into each other so that they are a mere fraction of an inch from touching. Two centuries and more of weatherbeating mean that the epitaphs and scripture have been obliterated and the dates and names have been rubbed away to mere shapes. But if you stand and squint you can see that the surnames were the same. And the stones still stand. This fact alone strikes me as being more eloquent, poetic and romantic than whatever sentiment the descendants of this husband and wife could have commissioned a mason to carve all of those generations ago.

And so that’s where I shall leave this. Like the squirrel I have my morsel, my image, which can be stored like some many other glimpses in the hollows of my memory. Such things can only be happened upon when walking with a contemplative and open spirit, no matter if the tenor of the day be elated, dejected, lovestruck or merely bored and bemused.

I am at the north entrance gate, back to the beginning. The rain is worse, the rain is real. The world with its demands and its pleasures and its mysteries and certainties lays before me once again. The same as it ever was, yet transformed by my sojourn among those who are no longer with us.

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