Back To The Graveyard

I have spent a lot of time in graveyards at different moments in my life.

Recently I have circled around to that habit again. I spend chunks of my lunch hours in the Calvary Cemetery in Concord. Interestingly enough I have better conversations there than I do with my co-workers.

Hanging around a cemetery is a somber thing to do. The atmosphere is heavy. This cemetery is large, there are thousands of people buried there. The biggest thing I take away from my visits is perspective.

I have agreed to be cremated. But I would kind of like to be buried. I like the idea of gravestones. Two dates. A beginning and an ending. My name. Maybe a meaningful phrase. A life encapsulated in as brief a way as possible.

But maybe that's all you need when you die.

I would not expect Keith and Craig to visit me there. I'm in their head. That's all that matters. I just like the idea of lying there, surrounded by thousands of others who have lived their lives and now deal with the aftermath. If there is any dealing to be done.

What I would not do, assuming I die first, is put Carol's name on the headstone with a hyphen and no end date. I hate that and there are a lot of those in the cemetery. It feels like an invitation to die for the surviving spouse.

I mostly drive aound looking at gravestones, absorbed in my melancholy, until something reaches out and grabs me. Then I get out and walk around. When the weather gets warmer I am going to eat my lunch while sitting on a bench amongst the dead.

There are many couples buried together and I have noticed the same phrase, give or take a word or two, popping up consistently.

"We lived together in happiness. Now we rest together in peace."

Simple words that pack a punch. The idea of lives lived together in happiness followed by an eternity together in peace sounds like a blueprint for what it should mean to be human.

This past Friday I came across a gravestone with these words on it: "I lived a life, perhaps unlike yours, but a life it was. I dreamed and I loved and I left a print on this earth. Recognized and remembered I sleep in peace. For I was someone."

Beautiful.

My ultimate goal is to come across a gravestone with the name Testa on it. Unlikely in Concord; there are not many Italians buried there. But if I ever do, I will spend time standing in front of it, thinking thoughts. Most likely I will come back to it time and time again.

I imagine seeing my name in that way will sharpen my focus and intensify my pensiveness. Like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. If I react the way Scrooge did the first time I see it, maybe it will inspire explosive, focused, and meaningful change in my life.

If not, then, at the very least, repeated visits will serve as a darkly honest reminder that time is short.