A couple people I know died on a day K and I were in Western Massachusetts. She wanted to look at old cemeteries that day. Something must’ve been in the air. She’d looked up one about an hour away in an old guide book but my brother said there were a couple little ones in his town.
I don’t have any special attachment to boneyards. Maybe it’s because I know so few people buried in them. The youngest person lying in this one had arrived in 1909 or so. The first death news of the day was an old friend of my parents’ back in Russia. I have no memories of this man except his frequent mention when my folks talk of friends in the old country. They came to the graveyard with us and I assume they were thinking of him while looking over the field of weathered stones.
The other guy who died was someone I knew. I got the news via text and didn’t say much in response. I knew he’d been sick.
They say if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all. I got a couple more texts about his passing in the following hours. I made a few snide remarks to K and kept it to that for the most part. There’s little to be gained from sharing my thoughts sometimes. I found the first tribute posted online right away. There will likely be many more.
We went to a second little cemetery. In the first we were looking for faces with wings; there were none of those in the second. Instead, many stones featured hands, most pointing upward. My favorite, though, was holding a set of interlocked rings, the last one broken off. I’m guessing it’s an Oddfellows or Quaker thing.
There will be more frequent cemetery visits to come. Perhaps I’ll form more personal attachments to these places then. It’s the most natural thing I can think of.
