Happy Halloween

there's a lovely mood in a cemetery on a wet fall day. Very somber, as if the graves themselves know its Halloween.
the leaves help, blanketing everything thickly. They certainly add a bit of atmosphere.

The rain-dampened stones certainly look all nice and ready for a real haunting, even the modern graves manage to look somewhat creepy.
But why? Why do moss and leaves and rain seem so sinister in graveyards? Is it that Fall reminds us of death? Is it the heavily influence of the media, all those movies and fabulous documentaries on hauntings?

for that matter: why do we persist in out belief that graveyards are haunted? Doesn't it make more sense that ghosts would be in places where they had lived, rather than the place where their remains were interred? Based on that, other than my eventual specter, most ghosts should generally avoid graveyards. On the other hand, is the concept of "making sense" one that we can actually apply to ghosts?

(I'm not entirely sure about ghosts, one way or another, and if not for Halloween, I wouldn't be discussing them here.)

Regardless, the atmosphere is wonderful, well suited to deep thoughts, heavy philosophy, and intense emotion. Its a marvelous time to stand graveside and contemplate mortality, and the lives of all who came before us. This Halloween, don't waste all your time mooching candy off your neighbors; go visit your local cemetery, and ponder the deep questions of life.

Our Glorious Dead

Groveton Confederate Cemetery has two headstones. There are 266 soldiers buried here, but most of them were never identified. thats 264 families left wondering.

but from the standpoint of a resting place, what more could you ask for? These boys are here, now, among the fields and trees where they fought and died. And if not for the heavy-handed gate and the fenced area, this might well be another field, another lovely roadside picnic area. It clearly doesn't matter to us, after our death, whether we lie in a glorious mausoleum or in the unmarked, sun-dappled ground beneath a tree. Even the most lovingly placed and carefully inscribes tombstones eventually fall into disrepair, and rather than bittersweet reminders of a dearly adored one, they become sinister props to nightmares.

But the fact remains that the presence of a cemetery, of the stones themselves, provides us with a link, with a reminder of generations past, even if they aren't our own glorious dead. We are not the first to face struggles, to suffer, to contemplate death. It is, in many ways, a comfort to walk among the old headstones and know that you will not be the first to venture into the valley of the shadow, and to hope that you, too, will be lovingly remembered with a carefully placed stone, and possibly flowers, flags, trinkets. In that regard the unmarked graves of Groveton are far more horrifying than even the most run-down cemetery: here lie the unremembered, the lost and alone. How many more lie interred around us, the nameless deceased of the ages, gone now, and forgotten?

Meditations from beyond the graveyard

(John Jones, Warrenton Cemetery, VA), an introduction to my consideration and appreciation.

the initial draw of this particular stone is that it broke off its pedestal, into two pieces, and has been stacked up again, rather than left broken in the grass (as some other stones in this cemetery are). Does this speak to devoted descendants? careful visitors? the efforts of a caretaker working to maintain some order?

What intrigues me is the fact that this man died and was buried in the late Victorian era, an age of heavy adornment, the same era that saw cemetery fences complete with tassels and swags wrought out of iron, and yet here is a grave with no frills, no information other than name and date of death: no intricate carving, no word about birth, no sentimental verse, no hint of relations: no parents, siblings, wife, children. Nothing but a name and year of death. Was this a replacement for an earlier, more detailed marker? If so, why sparse now? Or is this the original? This might have been an infant, or a man well over 100, and we'll never know. Did he die far from home, sought unsuccessfully for years by distressed relatives who never thought to contact a small-town undertaker? Had he simply outlived everyone who might have filled in more detail? Did he die as the forgotten prisoner of the local jail, shunned by horrified loved ones? Or is the simplicity of his grave a reflection of a simple, uncluttered life? Perhaps this spartan tombstone was covered in blooms, soaked in tears, stroked by lonely fingers. Maybe he is the hero of hundreds of family legends, with dozens of namesakes, and the broken bits of his stone were neatly stacked by devoted descendants. Or maybe his name has been forgotten entirely, not invoked in decades, until it fell beneath my camera.

This is what makes graveyards more beautiful than parks and sculpture gardens: the heavy hand of humanity, the sense of mortality, but also the whisper of long lives well lived, beloved dead laid to rest with great care, cherished memories, and prayers, the fervent calls of the soul, hoping, yearning, begging for a pleasant hereafter.

The air is thicker, calmer in a graveyard, and they are ideal for meditation, self-reflection, and consideration of the human condition. They are lovely, poignant, frightening, sad, and, in their own way, places of great hope and joy.

Ultimately, Mr. Jones' life and fate matter less than his presence, obvious because of his broken marker, which might well be the only sign that he ever lived at all. But he did live, and across a full century he's reached now not only into the realm of photography, but onto the internet. For John Jones, there is a hereafter, simply because his gravestone broke, and I passed by it, and now bring his life and death here for consideration.