Here Comes Treble: Graveyards
...Surely, our memories of those we have loved are all that keeps them alive in this world, and when those who remember them have passed on to the next, there is no need for solid memorials such as head-stones and plots of earth, no matter how beautifully planted with glorious blooms...
Isabel Bradley muses on the purpose of graveyards - and the feelings they inspire.
Tumble-down stones,
Words worn off by wind and weather,
Lichen-splotched and ivy-shaped…
Old, so old.
No-one remembers who lies here.
No-one tends these graves anymore.
Over there – a splash of grief-given colour
Glares across the long, seeding grass.
Here, tulips, lovingly tended,
Planted in stone borders inscribed:
“Much-loved Mother lies here,
After fifty years, re-united with Father.”
When time and weather, ivy and wind,
Wind away the words from this stone too,
Who, then, will remember?
Every time Leon and I travel, we find our way into a graveyard, amble among the monuments, find familiar and foreign names, wonder at fallen angels and resting places turned into bright and beautiful gardens.
The Jewish cemetery in Prague is particularly poignant – limited to one small city block, the old graves may not be desecrated to make way for new. The problem was solved by moving the gravestones to the borders and burying the newly dead on top of the old. Standing on the street, one now looks up at the green surface of the cemetery, well above head height..
Finding space in which to bury our dead is becoming almost as big a problem as it is finding housing for the burgeoning population of living humanity. Creating ‘green’ alternatives to the traditional burial in expensive caskets is becoming popular in both the United States of America and the United Kingdom. These preclude the use of chemicals, both in the preparation of the body and the building of coffins, and include burial in a cotton winding sheet, or coffin made of recycled cardboard. Green burial areas are set aside as nature reserves where the ‘headstones’ are indigenous shrubs and trees instead of concrete mausoleums and granite angels.
My father donated his body to the local university for scientific use. Hopefully it helped medical students learn about anatomy. His memory lives in my heart, and the hearts of all who loved him. There is no plaque or headstone to say that he lived. When he died, we threw a party for friends and family, a party that he would have enjoyed enormously.
My brother-in-law’s body was cremated. The family held a ‘celebration of his life’ in his home, and some time later his ashes were scattered on the Thames, a place he’d known and loved. He, too, lives on in the memories and hearts of those who shared his life.
At the other end of the spectrum, in France recently, a mass-grave of Australian soldiers who died in the trenches in the First World War was re-discovered near Fromelles. The bodies will be exhumed, DNA testing and comparison with living relatives will be carried out, and then these lost boys will be buried in the first new First World War graveyard to be opened in fifty years. At such burial sites, the bewilderment and fear of those who died rise to greet the sensitive visitor. At the sites where children have been buried, the raw, unending grief of their parents hangs over the tiny graves forever.
Surely, our memories of those we have loved are all that keeps them alive in this world, and when those who remember them have passed on to the next, there is no need for solid memorials such as head-stones and plots of earth, no matter how beautifully planted with glorious blooms.
Or… if graveyards were to cease to exist, would we, perhaps, be losing a valuable source of historical information?
Until next time… ‘here comes Treble!’
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By Isabel Bradley
