Isn’t it amazing? It’s Kyoto cemetery in Japan, and knowing the population of Japan I am assuming that the people lucky enough to have the money for a grave are very wealthy and the rest are cremated! But look at it, all the people, all those lives, remembered by a stone!
I love graveyards, always have done, I have written in a previous post (probably more than once) about my family’s connections to death, like Six feet under but totally unsexy! As a child I developed a weird acceptance of death, it was talked of as a very natural, everyday thing , it was my family’s bread and butter…so it was boring! I was often brought to graveyards, or into funeral homes, sat up on tables beside bodies, played in coffins! I always thought the funeral homes were really sophisticated and swish, velvet drapes, fresh flowers, red carpets, in fact the first time I went to the Library Bar in Lily’s Bordello I remember thinking it was just like the funeral homes, but with a piano instead of a coffin in the middle of the room!
So as a youngster we used to go visit our dead relatives, we’d make a day of it, bring a picnic, have a bit of fun, nice chat, a few decades of the rosary around the grave, we might even visit the relatives still alive who lived nearby! Then as a Gothic teenager I liked nothing better than a good old nose around a graveyard, not with my family anymore but either my boyfriend or one of my mates! Glasnevin was a favorite spot for this, Graveyards like Palmerstown were too new, whereas there was so much history somewhere like Glasnevin. There was a small protestant church nearby to my school and it had a really lovely graveyard, 200 year old grave stones! So when I was mitching off school with my delinquent friend we used to head there, get changed out of our uniforms (lesbian graveyard erotica anyone?) and then we’d sit on the stones smoking! Good times!
Jo the Mama was saying her little 5 year old has developed a fixation with death recently and is asking to visit graves, now I have to say I don’t think it’s a bad thing, maybe a more natural approach to death would be better? Jo has an amazingly natural attitude to life anyway.
Now I still like graveyards, but a 34 year old woman wandering around is considered a but strange so I don’t visit them. I have several people that I was incredibly close to, people I loved who have died and I never visit their graves. They aren’t there, the moment the last breath leaves the body the energy and life force passes out into the universe, leaving just a husk behind. And why should I visit a hole in the ground that contains a husk? It would be like having a really beautiful plant and when the plant died burying the pot it lived it? then visiting that buried pot for several decades!
So I suppose my fixation with graveyards is to do with the fact that I never knew the dead, and in my head I create little stories, who each person was, how they lived, what they died from…I just love all that. The fact that 200 years after they died I was wandering through a graveyard looking at there gravestone. Some religions believe that we only really die if people forget about them, so maybe when I look at the grave stone and my mind wanders to the person who died it in someway keeps them alive?
Midget Wrangler 
My mother wanted her ashes scattered at sea and I fought to keep her wishes respected (whisper:I hate my sister) but persoanlly, I’m an Earth sign, burial makes sense to me, I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing her coffin fed into the furnace – bleh! And I’m sorry not to have a place to go to, to connect, like a grave.
I know the concept of going to the beach and sea is a lot more appropriate, it makes more sense that her energy has returned to nature, diffused, but it feels to big and unfocused there – also, I don’t want to associate the sea with her or her death. much as hse might have liked that.
hmm, this is getting inappropriately personal, sorry!
my husband wants to be cremated and shot into space on a firework, how about that!
You should visit the German graveyard up in the Wicklow Hills some afternoon; breathtaking beauty and silence.
Oh, yes, it’s gorgeous. It’s sort of on the way to roundwood? And there’s the Feather Beds, which sounds so lovely – my inlaws used to go there when they were ourting.
Ok maybe the three of us can take a little drive up the Wicklow hills one afternoon? Sounds like fun!
I am a fire sign so I like the idea of cremation, it will release my energy in to the universe!
Hi MW
If I’m honest I visit and tend to my mothers grave only so that if people who knew her visit the grave, they would know she was loved and cared for because her grave is kept neat. I still believe that’s a good thing. I couldn’t not do it. Her sister visits and she was very close, so I like her to think we look after it. Even though like you said, it’s nothing more than a hole in the ground really. But it has her name on it.
Her anniversay is coming up in a few days so I better get my gardening gloves out!
Used to love graveyards when I was younger too though you’re right, there is something slightly creepy about enjoying it just for fun in your mid-30s. Let me know when you, Jo and GB are going up the mountains 😉
Was down in the graveyard where herself’s Grandfather is buried over the weekend. It was littered with bear bottles and discarded joints, really made me angry. It’s the ultimate show of no respect in my book.