You're Still Here

Darn Tootin - Tiny Ghosts

I read this entry this morning. I'm a little weird. I like cemeteries. Not at night in the dark or when I'm at a funeral, but visiting my relative's graves is a soothing activity to me. It helps that in one small cemetery in a southwest suburb holds 15 or 20 relatives of mine. I know exactly where my great-grandparents are buried.

My grandmother used to live two blocks from the cemetery, and when she was able and walking, she would head over and tend to her husband's, parent's, and brother's graves. We would go with her, and as we walked she would point out people that she knew. There was the girl who died at thirteen - her parents wanted my grandmother to be a companion for her. And the baby born with water on the brain.

Her sisters tend to sons and husbands and parents and siblings to this day. It may sound a bit odd, but I like that place. I like walking through those rows and knowing where everyone is. And I know that I remember them, and am linked to them.

I looked up my father's parents graves in a large cemetery in the city. It's not the same, because the love isn't there. You don't see people tending to the graves there, looking after the past. And the German cemetery in the same small town as my grandmother's cemetery is off a side road and down aways. Set apart and neglected, but I found the grave of my first American anscestor there.

I didn't know until I was an adult that all people don't have family cemeteries, that they don't see these places as places to visit and wander through.