RIP
So I did something slightly morbid today. I went to class this morning and it was a really clear, if cold, autumn morning. When I got out, I looked across the street and saw a spectacular burst of colour on a tree. The camera was grabbed, and I made my way to the Riverside cemetery. Pictures of the tree were taken, but I'm far more interested in the ones I took of the gravestones.
I haven't spent a lot of time in cemeteries - mostly because I know all of 2 people who are on that side of the pearly gates. It was odd though, I'd expected to feel very somber and maybe a little creeped out. It wasn't like that at all though. I mean, I wasn't running around humming "Hit me Baby One More Time" or anything, but it was just calm, relaxing, and insightful.
This was a gravestone that really intrigued me. All it says is "LOVELADY." No dates, no other names, nothing.The stone is very impressive. I wonder what the story behind it is. I'm afraid I can't help imagining a romantic love story that ended tragically. Someone must have loved her, what happened? Maybe she died of consumption like Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge. Or maybe she was killed in a jealous rage by her husband, when he found out about her wild love affair with the ruggedly handsome gardener (who, of course, subsequently knocked off the husband for stealing his love away...)
This one gets to me because it's a child's grave, and it is my firm belief that no parent should have to outlive their child.It was intruiging, otherwise, because of the moss and lichen growing slowly up the cherub's body, and covering the inscription.
The statuette is also, as you may have noticed, quite headless. To me that brings home the fact that these tributes to the dead are just as temporary as we are, although I suppose we like to imagine otherwise.
posted by swanky_little_duck @ 10:53 p.m.
3 Comments:
I grew up right next door to a graveyard. Like 30 feet away from my front door "right next to."
And that's where I spent most of my days playing. As long as you're not dead, graveyards are great places for walks, picnics, and games of ghosts in the graveyard. Hee.
it's weird that you say that cause i was just thinking that i miss suzie and pehaps i am a little drunk but who else do i miss and don't know it. maybe everyone just missed out on everyone else. ok i 'm done now
I have a graveyard just down the street from my house and across the street from my school, but I've never been in it, though I love going to graveyards and looking at all the headstones. I find it to be a good place to think and to get perspective on things. And it really is interesting to see what's been written as the final tribute to the life one has lived, and see how no matter how old or young, we try and put such a large and important thing into a few solitary words. But I am very strange with that kind of thing, so I am potentially alone in that... meh.
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