I have always liked cemeteries, both on the thought or imagination level and on the feeling or spiritual level. There is never any fearfulness or discomfort or even sadness for me to contend with. Even when visiting the graves of my parents the quietness, peacefulness and natural beauty of the place leaves little room for the negative.

The thoughtful or imagination sides of my cemetery strolls bring great entertainment. To find the graves of a 90-year-old man buried next to the three wives he outlived are fertile facts for my active imagination. I can only imagine why so many children died in a given year. Was it a disease and if so, what that must have been like for the community?

I do enjoy the imagination game of reading tombstones but, in truth, the major attraction that makes cemetery strolling so compelling to me is the non-thinking, feeling, spiritual side of the experience. The compelling spirituality of the place means that I find it difficult to have a conversation in a cemetery. I tend to wander off and cover myself in solitude and be at peace with ever-present death.

The absence of human life – the sense of the presence of the “end of the struggle” with all of its past clamorous joys and sorrows – the finality of the peace that surrounds, allows me to open to the beauty and serenity of the moment.  My steps become lighter – slower with a purpose that is beyond movement.

I leave you with a thought on Cemetery Strolling.

“To think is to participate in life. To feel is to experience life.           Cemeteries are fertile ground for both.”