Graveyard Moments

About a year ago today, I read Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. It's a strange but enchanting story about a boy who was raised by ghosts in a graveyard after his family was murdered. It's a rather sad tale, really. A story about being alone, longing to fit in and searching for something (or someone). It's also about loving and losing, letting go and moving on.

It must have been an aftereffect of reading The Graveyard Book that, for some reason, I found myself wanting to linger a bit longer at the cemetery on All Saints' Day. I wondered how old our town cemetery was and what kind of secrets its tombs held.

Somehow, the ghost characters in the book reminded me that the corpses buried in those tombs were once "real" people who laughed and cried, sang and danced, breathed and lived. Yet no matter how much they were loved or hated, no matter how much their death was mourned over, their memory fades as the years pass. In time, their graves and tomb markers are all that will remain, reminding the living that -- for a short while -- so and so once walked on this earth.

In about a week, on All Saints' Day, I will be going back to that cemetery. The old headstones with now-familiar names are bound to be there still. But for sure, there will be fresh ones on which new names are engraved. I hope I remember to mention those names in a whispered prayer as I pass by. And I hope you do, too -- in memory of our fellow travelers, who just happened to have gone on ahead of us.

Go to Graveyard Moments, Too

Live Now!

Birthdays are as good a time as any to think about death. And while the subject of death may be eerie or morbid to some, I find it useful to ponder the subject, mainly because it leads me to reflect on life. Knowing that everything can end in a snap of Divine Fingers keeps me on my toes. This day may be the beginning, or it may be the end... the first of many more days, or the last day of my life.

I am turning another year older in a few days. I feel like I have aged -- grown, learned, experienced, taught, lived -- so much but also like I have aged so little over the years. That's good, I think. Anyway, I like the thought: so much done, so much still to do; so much has come, so much still to come. That is how each day is anyway, isn't it?

Like anniversaries, birthdays are milestones for me. They mark an end and a beginning. They make me look back and move forward. They lead me to be grateful and to be hopeful. They remind me that time is running -- fast -- and that it waits for no man (or woman). There are things to be said and done. And it is best not to put them off for a later time because a "later time" may never come.

I will live now then -- and live to the full!