When I was a kid, around twelve, my best friend and I loved to ride our bikes all day. Especially during the summer. We were gone from the time we got up until we had to come home for dinner. We rode to the 7-11 store for candy, to the movies for matinees, to parks to play tennis or climb monkey bars. By far, however, our favorite destination was the nearby cemetery.
I know it sounds weird. But if you had ever been there you would say: who wouldn’t love such a place? It was huge, for one thing, with plenty of winding roadways. Majestic statues oversaw the lush landscaping. Marble-walled mini-gardens covered in ivy were peppered about the rolling hills. A pond with babbling ducks and geese attracted neighbors who tossed them bread. The trees dripped Spanish moss and filtered the sunlight into dappled shady oases from the summer heat. Flowers spilled from gravesites, grew in beds and planters, and blossomed in the dogwoods and magnolias. A light and soothing fragrance floated through every breeze.
This past Saturday I visited again, largely by accident. My dogs marched me through the area on our weekend marathon walk and before I knew it, we were approaching the gates. I didn’t have to pull them toward a shorter route since it was the weekend so in we went. Those fresh fragrances floated toward us. I could feel the dogs’ excitement: new territory to sniff! And for me, a welcome trip down memory lane.
I found all the graves that used to tug at my preteen heart. The babies who weren’t even named. The veterans, many from Vietnam only a few years earlier. The young girls who were my age when they died or had the same first name as me. A few of the headstones had actual photos. The most poignant of which was a little boy around two or three.
His was the only grave I remembered from those early years that I couldn’t find. I knew the exact area where he was laid to rest, but the only marker that had a photograph on it was for a young woman who died at nineteen. Where was that cute little kid? I figured he would be easy to find because so few graves display a picture. His photo had shown an open mouthed goofy grin and a pile of yellow blonde hair. Teeth were missing here and there. He was happy.
His grave should stick out as I meandered along the pathways. But it didn’t. I found a headstone marking the grave of a boy who was almost five when he died and I wondered if I had simply remembered his age wrong. That grave was the only one of a child in that area.
Whether that was the right grave or not, the missing picture was almost as sad as the fact that he was there in the first place. What happened to it? Had someone accidentally knocked it off while edging or weed whacking? Did vandals remove it? Perhaps weather degraded it to the point that it fell apart? (Although that seemed unlikely; those photo holders are built tough).
Any of those circumstances would have been sad enough. All show such indifference to the humanity the photo represented; to the sorrow that lay within that tiny plot of land. Had the family ever visited and seen that it was gone? What did they do?
But perhaps the family themselves removed it. I imagined them visiting that grave over the years, pulling back stray weeds, dusting off the sand or pollen. Standing over it and wondering why. Wishing they had done something differently, maybe, and knowing that none of it mattered now anyway. At some point concluding no one would remember him. He’s not really here. Deciding to bring his picture home to a keepsake box.
Such imaginings were always part of our trips to the cemetery. It was beautiful and quiet there, sure, but it also gave us that chance to think about death from a safe space. In a kid way without grownups interfering or deciding that what we were thinking about was too morbid. We weren’t confronting our mortality or feeling the weight of our human condition. We were just biking through pretty gardens, reading the headstones. And imagining. It wasn’t frightening in any way.
In fact, it was actually empowering. Even as a kid I remember being so glad I could see the flowers and hear the ducks and glide through the dappled sunlight. Then go home. Something those folks could no longer do. Those afternoons in the cemetery taught me what “count your blessings” really meant. I had a mom and dad, a home, a dog. Friends. Saturdays where I was free to do almost anything I wanted. And, of course, a future.
I’ve always been a rambler. Not one to think too much about making plans or visualizing outcomes far into the future. Perhaps those quiet afternoons among strangers’ graves nurtured the part of me who just wanted to be instead of do. Who wanted to daydream and wander. To think. I’ve always felt those were the skills I brought to the world.
We will all end up in a place like my favorite cemetery someday (or at least go through the prep work). Such knowledge doesn’t frighten me but, on my more sensible days, it does light a fire. I need to remember those simple feelings of gratitude more often. I’ve lived more days than many of the souls whose names I used to read on those stones. Have I done enough with the time?
I can’t overlook the fact that the most vibrant, kind, important human beings in the world will breathe a final time. Friends and loved ones will eulogize and pray over them. Then they will tuck them away somewhere with nothing but their names and years of life to mark them. Perhaps a bible verse or line of poetry to adorn their headstones. But eventually even all those who knew the deceased will follow.
And there will be no one but strangers meandering through the lovely grounds. Stopping to gawk at a very long (or short) life. Glad they are there in that beautiful space. A little more grateful for all they have.
And happy they can go home.