A Cemetery Essay.
I wrote this almost 2 years ago because no one could understand my quiet love for cemeteries. Can you understand now?
April 24, 2004
A CEMETERY ESSAY
Life is busy. It is clutter and it is noise. Thus, people seek shelter. We seek a single place that allows the fog to dissipate. Sometimes, if we're lucky, answers appear and we name it hope. We go there to cry. We go there to plead with God. We go there to feel life bubbling underneath our skin. We go to find inspiration, fulfillment, and meaning. Why we go is never as important as the importance itself.
Some people die without ever revealing this secret place. I will tell you my place, my special place to where I rarely travel, but when I do, I feel alive. You will find this ironic when I tell you.
My place is with those who live six feet under. It is the only place on earth that is full of people you cannot see. They do not talk back, for they are dead, but that does not mean they do not speak to me.
This is the cemetery.
Can you see it? Vast valleys and rolling hills. Green grass blowing in the wind, hiding naked broken twigs shivering. Winding paths weaving in and out among the tall oak trees. But the air is thick with a perfume you cannot smell, a taste that slows your breath and bends your legs. Your fingers itch, and your arms outstretch to the stones before you. Each stone, each mound, a story.
You see, I am a storymaker. Then I am a storyteller. I create life. Then I deliver it. I write it. Then I spell it. You are, and then you will be. You will be, and then you are.
There is a short list running around the world of people whose lives I have recreated. They will never know they are living a double life within my mind. But it was their blotched skin, their crooked teeth, the way they swung their arms, the depth of their eyes, their sunken cheeks,
their hoarse voice, their long toes, the light in their hair, the count of moles...anything and one thing that made them irrevocably and irreversably unique. Suddenly, I whisk them off to a second world.
The man with crooked teeth falls in love with the girl that counted moles on her arms like stars. A tree opens its eyes and, unable to withstand the pain of the world, swings its brown arms in fury. A girl is born beneath the ground. She sprouts,flies among the mockingbirds, and before she dies, writes 65 poems about love, living, and the inbetween.
This is why, when my sleeves turn white and my palms turn mottled red, I resort to the fiction section in the library for my temporary secret place. When I cannot think, I can read the thoughts of other people who did and wrote a book on their thoughts. Wild and free thoughts. The smell of old, of a time before my parents' parents were born, lingers in my nostrils. I finger brown edges; I am that man who killed the bastard that slept with my wife who never cooked anything but burnt macaroni and cheese that she poisoned and left for me.
Fiction is notreal becoming real. Nonfiction is real telling you its version of what is real. But, cemeteries.
Cemeteries.
Running my fingers across a name, a date, a description. Cemeteries are real becoming what might be real and what probably isn't. The difference between a book and a tombstone lies within the beginning. In a book, you begin at the beginning and you wonder how it'll end. Standing in front of a tombstone, you begin at the end and wonder how it all began.
Robert "The Fighter" Dylan. (1914-1942). A boy who fought for peace and found it where he least expected it.
This is what I read with the wind beneath my skirt and dust between my toes. I close my eyes and ask: What did you fight against? Was it the war you did not ask to be fought? Or a disease you did not ask to be born with?
When I look again, I see a patch of grass, pressed so often the blades are permanently bent. But the blades are thick and long, and I wonder whose cheek laid against them. Whose rosy cheeks were laid bare with tears at your parting? Did she beg for your return as her tears watered flowers to blossom there?
The path winds, and a row of tombstones appear. I cock my head in appreciation for the humanity of the awkward grooves, how mud-stained hands must have strained to keep the rusty nail in place as they hammered in honor of the fallen. Crossing my legs indian-style, I read:
Peter Wilkenson. (1845-1895).
Martha Wilkenson. (1850-1895).
Nicholas Wilkenson. (1874-1895).
Patricia Wilkenson. (1876-1895).
Abigail Wilkenson. (1889-1895).
My choice for them is a fatal fire. I can feel the heat on my heels, see the flames licking their nightgowns as they pound the doors, hear Abby crying and hugging her teddy. Peter's arms stretch for one last embrace as his family crouches with him against the walls, helpless as the night envelopes them. In the morning, embers flicker and die. The smoke rises and disappears, camouflauged against an overcast sky.
On and on it goes, story after story. An open grave, ready to receive a husband whose wife waits, as she did for 54 years in the twilight hours with dinner and open arms ready. A baby who never got a chance. An old woman who never took it. The rich, the poor. The lonely and the loved.
Those who fought and those who ran. Men of all races. Women of all societies. Children of tears, years, and capacities. People of all times, lives, and paths. A life continuum through death.
To walk among the living is to experience life in waiting.
To walk among the dead is to experience life continuing.
It is to be saturated with history, love lost, love found, bitterness, regret,
should haves wouldhavescouldhaves, wants and needs, tragedies and victories.
It is all at once tragic and beautiful.
Suddenly young, then old again.
This is the one place anyone can enter and no one leaves.
Where you talk and no one talks back.
Where you begin at the end.
Where two feet can stand among three worlds.
It is my place.
One day my feet will lie below the ground and not stand above it.
One day someone else will walk by, rest their fingers in the grooves of my name,
feel the breeze underneath their arms, and wonder...
And I will laugh at their stories
About how I sailed the seven seas and married a viking and
About how I killed the pirate who tried to steal a kiss and
About how I died by spearing an angry gorilla, but
I will never tell them what really happened, because
That day I will be dining with Robert, tracing my fingers along his scars.
I will be conversing with Luke, teasing him about his first kiss.
I will sew a new teddybear for little Abby.
We will know that some stories are better told by someone who did not live it.
This is a cemetery.
I walk along its paths.
This is a cemetery.
It is all about what might have been.
This is a cemetery.
This is a cemetery.
This is a cemetery.
This is a cemetery.
April 24, 2004
A CEMETERY ESSAY
Life is busy. It is clutter and it is noise. Thus, people seek shelter. We seek a single place that allows the fog to dissipate. Sometimes, if we're lucky, answers appear and we name it hope. We go there to cry. We go there to plead with God. We go there to feel life bubbling underneath our skin. We go to find inspiration, fulfillment, and meaning. Why we go is never as important as the importance itself.
Some people die without ever revealing this secret place. I will tell you my place, my special place to where I rarely travel, but when I do, I feel alive. You will find this ironic when I tell you.
My place is with those who live six feet under. It is the only place on earth that is full of people you cannot see. They do not talk back, for they are dead, but that does not mean they do not speak to me.
This is the cemetery.
Can you see it? Vast valleys and rolling hills. Green grass blowing in the wind, hiding naked broken twigs shivering. Winding paths weaving in and out among the tall oak trees. But the air is thick with a perfume you cannot smell, a taste that slows your breath and bends your legs. Your fingers itch, and your arms outstretch to the stones before you. Each stone, each mound, a story.
You see, I am a storymaker. Then I am a storyteller. I create life. Then I deliver it. I write it. Then I spell it. You are, and then you will be. You will be, and then you are.
There is a short list running around the world of people whose lives I have recreated. They will never know they are living a double life within my mind. But it was their blotched skin, their crooked teeth, the way they swung their arms, the depth of their eyes, their sunken cheeks,
their hoarse voice, their long toes, the light in their hair, the count of moles...anything and one thing that made them irrevocably and irreversably unique. Suddenly, I whisk them off to a second world.
The man with crooked teeth falls in love with the girl that counted moles on her arms like stars. A tree opens its eyes and, unable to withstand the pain of the world, swings its brown arms in fury. A girl is born beneath the ground. She sprouts,flies among the mockingbirds, and before she dies, writes 65 poems about love, living, and the inbetween.
This is why, when my sleeves turn white and my palms turn mottled red, I resort to the fiction section in the library for my temporary secret place. When I cannot think, I can read the thoughts of other people who did and wrote a book on their thoughts. Wild and free thoughts. The smell of old, of a time before my parents' parents were born, lingers in my nostrils. I finger brown edges; I am that man who killed the bastard that slept with my wife who never cooked anything but burnt macaroni and cheese that she poisoned and left for me.
Fiction is notreal becoming real. Nonfiction is real telling you its version of what is real. But, cemeteries.
Cemeteries.
Running my fingers across a name, a date, a description. Cemeteries are real becoming what might be real and what probably isn't. The difference between a book and a tombstone lies within the beginning. In a book, you begin at the beginning and you wonder how it'll end. Standing in front of a tombstone, you begin at the end and wonder how it all began.
Robert "The Fighter" Dylan. (1914-1942). A boy who fought for peace and found it where he least expected it.
This is what I read with the wind beneath my skirt and dust between my toes. I close my eyes and ask: What did you fight against? Was it the war you did not ask to be fought? Or a disease you did not ask to be born with?
When I look again, I see a patch of grass, pressed so often the blades are permanently bent. But the blades are thick and long, and I wonder whose cheek laid against them. Whose rosy cheeks were laid bare with tears at your parting? Did she beg for your return as her tears watered flowers to blossom there?
The path winds, and a row of tombstones appear. I cock my head in appreciation for the humanity of the awkward grooves, how mud-stained hands must have strained to keep the rusty nail in place as they hammered in honor of the fallen. Crossing my legs indian-style, I read:
Peter Wilkenson. (1845-1895).
Martha Wilkenson. (1850-1895).
Nicholas Wilkenson. (1874-1895).
Patricia Wilkenson. (1876-1895).
Abigail Wilkenson. (1889-1895).
My choice for them is a fatal fire. I can feel the heat on my heels, see the flames licking their nightgowns as they pound the doors, hear Abby crying and hugging her teddy. Peter's arms stretch for one last embrace as his family crouches with him against the walls, helpless as the night envelopes them. In the morning, embers flicker and die. The smoke rises and disappears, camouflauged against an overcast sky.
On and on it goes, story after story. An open grave, ready to receive a husband whose wife waits, as she did for 54 years in the twilight hours with dinner and open arms ready. A baby who never got a chance. An old woman who never took it. The rich, the poor. The lonely and the loved.
Those who fought and those who ran. Men of all races. Women of all societies. Children of tears, years, and capacities. People of all times, lives, and paths. A life continuum through death.
To walk among the living is to experience life in waiting.
To walk among the dead is to experience life continuing.
It is to be saturated with history, love lost, love found, bitterness, regret,
should haves wouldhavescouldhaves, wants and needs, tragedies and victories.
It is all at once tragic and beautiful.
Suddenly young, then old again.
This is the one place anyone can enter and no one leaves.
Where you talk and no one talks back.
Where you begin at the end.
Where two feet can stand among three worlds.
It is my place.
One day my feet will lie below the ground and not stand above it.
One day someone else will walk by, rest their fingers in the grooves of my name,
feel the breeze underneath their arms, and wonder...
And I will laugh at their stories
About how I sailed the seven seas and married a viking and
About how I killed the pirate who tried to steal a kiss and
About how I died by spearing an angry gorilla, but
I will never tell them what really happened, because
That day I will be dining with Robert, tracing my fingers along his scars.
I will be conversing with Luke, teasing him about his first kiss.
I will sew a new teddybear for little Abby.
We will know that some stories are better told by someone who did not live it.
This is a cemetery.
I walk along its paths.
This is a cemetery.
It is all about what might have been.
This is a cemetery.
This is a cemetery.
This is a cemetery.
This is a cemetery.
posted by The mini ninja at 5:23 PM
9 Comments:
What a wonderful essay! I love cemetaries as well. I think there is a great beauty in visiting a cemetary and watching others tend to their loved ones graves. I also think that is is an amazing act of love and respect to tend to your own family members graves even if you didn't know the person, but simply b/c of the fact that you belong to them. My mother always took us to the cemetary to tend to the graves and lay flowers or wreaths, and then we would have picnic and feed the birds at the cemetary's pond. There is just a simply honest beauty ab. the place--it shows not only our love for our family members, but our respect and tribute to all of those who have walked before us. What a great post-I really enjoyed it!
Leslie,
I really liked that essay. It had a ton of thought into it, which does make me wonder what I will have on my tomb stone (not the brand of frozen pizza).
I sometimes visit dead blogs, and wonder the stories behind why they stopped. I've found some where it seems just like the person will be posting as regular and it has been several year. Sometimes I dream up stories based on their last few entries, why they stopped, if they died, or just decided they wanted to retreat to a more private life.
If you have anymore essays, do please post them. You have a great talent!
I too like cemetaries. Come to Europe, we have great cemetaries of all shapes and sizes and ages here!
i too love cemetaries and I've always wanted to get into tombstone rubbings as I find them so beautiful...the older the better btw, but you've been able to put it all into words where I haven't been able to...the feelings that accompany me when I'm there.....there's our oldest cemetary in our city and I do the same things you've described there....I especially have a fondness for the sunken garden where the children of long ago were placed....I wonder at their short lives.
Etchen - The one and only time I've brought Jason to a cemetary, he was so freaked out that he tiptoed around each tombstone, taking care to stay as far away as possible.
My perspective is totally different. I think it is DISrespectful not to visit graves. When I am dead and in my grave, I want people to see me, to talk to me, eat a picnic next to me, take a nap...why not? That way I'll know that I haven't been forgotten.
I think I will do the same thing as your mother and take my future children to see their relatives at the cemetary.
Morris - Mmmm...tombstone pizza! I've been eating way too much pizza lately.
That's really interesting...going to dead blogs, that is. I usually assume that reasons for leaving are simple...like they were enticed by another server or they simply got busy. But maybe it was something more dramatic. How interesting.
Thanks for the kind words. I will post more prose and poetry, upon your encouragement!
Kimananda - Ooooo, that sounds like a wonderful idea! Do you have a favorite cemetery?
Rowan - There's a cemetery near my parent's house. One day I was wandering through when I stumbled upon an entire family of gravestones: two parents and three young children who'd all died on the same day. It was so tragic, yet so intriguing. To this day I wonder at their death. Fire? Flood? Murder? Hmmm...
Hi again,
I was just in the Jewish cemetary in Prague, and it was amazing (a pic to entice you more can be found on my blog). Here in Copenhagen, I recommend Assistens Kirkegård, which is big and park-like (lots of people come here to sun when it's warm...which is to say, not now!) and has lots of famous people whom in most cases you'll never have heard of (and some you may have, like H.C. Andersen, Søren Kirkegaard, and Niels Bohr). And of course Pere Lachaisse in Paris is the ultimate tourist cemetary, and deservedly so. Don't forget the states either...for a long time, it was illegal to bury people in San Francisco, so the nearby town of Colma is filled with cemetaries of all types, and is well worth a visit.
Hey-I complete randon sidenote here-but when we were just in Philadelphia we saw Benjamin Franklin's tombstone and apparently it is good luck to throw a penny on it--I didn't do it as I thought that was pretty disrespectful, but I guess it's a big tourist thing.
Gab At Les
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