By definition, I was in a graveyard and not a cemetery. (I only recently learned the subtle difference between the two while on a ghost tour in Savannah.) A graveyard has roots from days long ago, and refers to a burial site that is associated with or adjoins a church. Traditionally, people were always buried near churches. However, as population continued to increase and more land was necessary to accommodate burials, cemeteries came into existence. Cemetery comes from the Greek, "koimeterion", meaning "dormitory" or "resting place". Cemeteries were most often found on the fringes of town and presently, don't necessarily have specific religious affiliations.
I know graveyards are somber places. From the time I was a small child visiting my grandmother in New York, we would always go to the cemetery to visit my grandfather's grave. He died when I was eight.
Because my grandmother stopped driving once he was gone, she relied on others to take her to his gravesite. When we came to town, this was the first item of business on the agenda. I am not sure if she gave up driving in his absence because she became increasingly afraid of death, or if it was because she feared navigating the city traffic without him, but she never sat in the driver's seat again. She stopped sleeping in their master bedroom, as well; after grandpa died, she only slept in my father's childhood room. I didn't understand this when I was young, but the heaviness of death never seemed far from her or from that house.
I hadn't walked through a graveyard in years. There is a dirt road that divides it into two parts, with smaller roads to navigate closer to different sections. They are rutted out and sandy, unkept in some places entirely, as if the groundskeeper hasn't enough time to tend to the whole property. The side West of the dividing road looks as though it was established first, with older sites and more weathered headstones; the East side is better maintained and laid out in more of an organized grid, as if there had been more thought put into its design. Clearly one is in the South, however, when considering the multitude of Confederate Flags adorning many of the graves. Most were tattered to shreds and blew mournfully in the wind.
This was definitely a redneck graveyard. There was nothing uniform or standard about it. I've been to Arlington Cemetery, and this was a far cry from the perfectly manicured green lawn and designated allotment of space per standardized grave. There were statues of cherubs and angels of all shapes and sizes, many of them cracked and discolored with the passage of time. These sites were varied in size and splendor, decorated with shrines of sweet tea and unopened domestic beer cans. Some of the graves were encompassed by plastic lattice and a multitude of fake gaudy flowers. Others were like the Disneyland of ceramic garden animals, or littered with collections of tchotchkes and other trinkets. How grief-stricken the family must be who come to visit the graveside of one particular woman who had died in 2002 at only 23 years young, leaving her an offering of professional wrestling figurines. What was her story?
I don't know anyone buried in this graveyard, but it deeply depressed me. I am not even sure why it pained me as much as it did. It affected me in profound ways I hadn't prepared for. The grief was like a whirlpool of darkness, sucking me in with inexplicable force. What had started as an interesting draw to me, became a morbid gravitational pull of sorts. I couldn't fight the current. My senses were heightened. Once standing there, I could barely bring myself to move, but for the time constraints I was up against. Foreboding and frightful to me, that graveyard made me feel alive in a perverse and ironic sort of way. I felt bright and cheery in a radiant plum dress and strappy wedges, but the backdrop was that of dead trees, a gray sky threatening rain, bone chilling wind, and lichen-covered headstones. The Spanish moss even weeped from the oaks. There is no denying the mood was dark.
I guess to be that close to so much death saddened me to think about how fragile life really is. It was nearly impossible to contemplate the heartbreaking reality (God forbid) of losing a child. To reflect upon the gravestones of those who lived such brief lives, and wonder why their time on earth was so short left me feeling vacant. More awful still was to read the small, simple grave markers made from plastic that bore the words "Infant [last name]" , because the baby was never named or even valued enough to purchase a true granite headstone. Unfathomable to me to have a baby come into the world only to leave it the same day.
My heart ached to read the sorrowful messages of spouses lost. There were handmade headstones from driftwood and crudely poured concrete, probably because these people couldn't afford a proper burial and formal grave marker. Some of those carved words were so painfully pitiful, it made me question why we would care to pursue love at all, knowing eventually it will be lost, if not ultimately to death.
Then came the rain. It was soft and slight, blowing in gentle sheets. I didn't even care that I was getting wet and my shoes were muddy, but I did have the sense to shelter my camera. This wasn't about the photo assignment anymore. I wanted to read more stories. I wanted to know why people were buried in this random, eclectic place in the middle of ghetto neighborhood. It occurred to me that everyone has a story...even dead and cold in the ground, these people have stories. And what about the stories that didn't live on? For the graves that are overgrown and neglected and seemingly forgotten, is the person who occupies that plot of real estate also forgotten?
I'm quiet when I'm content or pensive. In that space, I was stone silent with both. I like to feel emotions. I know that's as scary as a graveyard to a lot of people, but I actually don't feel alive if I'm not in touch with what I'm feeling.
Interesting to me that a graveyard made me come alive with emotion. It made me want to live and breathe and run and feel and experience EVERYTHING. It made me long to sweep my kids into my arms and tell the people I love the most that I love them the most. Standing in the presence of life now passed made me want to continue to write the story of my life.
I would relive that experience again in a heartbeat. Most apropos, perhaps, was the rainbow that stretched across the entire sky as it was time to leave.
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