Thursday 2 April 2015

Grave News


At Easter it is customary to visit the graves of friends and relatives, the so-called dear departed who rest in peace, in order to pay one's respects and recall the good times shared when the loved one was alive.  

Sad to say, what meets the eye in my local graveyard is not always an agreeable sight. Today in the forest of headstones many headstones lay alongside my path like a row of felled trees; it's an annual tradition I have come to expect. But this year, as the photos show, the demolition was beyond the pale. 

The modern death business recycles the marble and granite, and rearranges the bones and the ashes of the occupants. Room for new arrivals to rest in peace is thereby made available in the subterranean mansions. At a price.

The next in line await their turn. 






3 comments:

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  2. In this respect I have to agree with Beckett: “Personally I have no bone to pick with graveyards, I take the air there willingly, perhaps more willingly than elsewhere, when take the air I must.” That said it’s been years since I visited a graveyard. I would estimate eighteen years. Carrie and I went to Edinburgh and ended up in Greyfriars Kirkyard and, of course, there were graves there older than America which she found fascinating. The graveyard I am most familiar with is Old Parish Churchyard. I often walked through it on my way home from school and, no, it was not always in the best of states. That made me sad but not for any sentimental reasons. I don’t like untidiness, that’s all.

    My parents were both cremated and I have no idea what they did with the ashes. I wrote to the crematorium and asked them to dispose of them. So there are no graves or garden of remembrance to visit and even if there were I doubt I would go. I was not brought up that way. When you’re dead you’re dead. I can remember my mum saying that on more than one occasion. I’ll be honest I have to look up their dates of death. I keep forgetting them. My family were also not much for anniversaries.

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  3. Thanks for the Beckett quote, Jim. My dad's ashes were scattered under a 500 year old National Trust oak. Like Beckett I only visit graveyard to take the air and do some interesting reading. I remember a stone which gave a woman's name and dates and it was written that she was the wife of the chimney sweep, so that's how she or her ashes would remembered.

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