Every atom that makes every part of our world is a graveyard and stardust, how we see this recycling of life can lean toward the macabre or the joyful. And this, we can choose.
A society that aggrandises the self over the sense of community (to the point of an unhealthy imbalance) would naturally raise these stone monuments to the dead, when all that remains is thier remains. One can speak soul-soul in any emotionally profound and honest moment, anytime, anyplace. The sense of self is important, we should love and value ourselves, yet perhaps when we learn to see "me" as part of "we," passing on will start to feel more natural. The graveyard, these stones, this sense of bizarre permanence, to my eyes shows an unwillingness to move on fully... and yet we all must when our time comes.
"Grave" is the rectangular hole in the green, and it is "serious." I can see how that happened and why we say "graveyard." Yet for the old it is normal, natural and we can celebrate whom they were and the legacy they left for the living. Perhaps we need a healthier attitude toward death, not the opposite, of course, but perhaps on the somber side of neutral rather than exaggerating the grief we feel when loved ones pass on.
There is no graveyard of other species, for they are returned to Earth's embrace. Perhaps there is wisdom in that, in the art of letting go with a sense of love and peace, of accepting that body and soul pass on.
Graveyards need not be grave, yet can be a place of new life and the reaching of blossom from tight bud. The graveyard can be a place to bring the joy of rebirth and renewal to the spirit and wish our loved ones well on their onward voyage. Sometimes I think of them as trees in a park rather than this place of stony regimentation. It think of the people I have loved as a forest and let them rest there in beauty. In this life we can make our own monsters, yet we can also make our own angels, our own memory parks that nourish and give to whom we are and are destined to become.
As the bodies of the beloved return their matter to the earth, their souls, ageless since birth, return to our maker. I let my feet tread lightly over the soils that support new spring growth, white-bells and green wands of grass, until I am there, my eyes resting on his name, my heart hearing the sound of his voice as if he were right there with me. Perhaps it is the memories that are the real bridge, that sense of love a key to open doors into the worlds beyond, yet here I am in the graveyard, these moments of reflection our everlasting bond.
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