A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE CEMETERY

My Nordic genic biochemistry begins to recover from New England summers in late September. This is when I know I am the centuries-diluted product of all that Viking raping and pillaging. Not my fault. No apologies here for the genes I have inherited.

Peter and I live in the ragged end of a posh Boston suburb. Our home is very comfortable. The streets are safe. The architecture is gradually improving from 19th-century-mill-town-drab to nicely designed side-by-side duplex homes with landscaping and new trees. Some would call this "gentrification". I call it a vast improvement. 

We walk the neighborhood regularly to stay healthy. There's a fairly close reservation along the Charles River. All sorts of people are about. Community regulars, shopkeepers, restauranteurs, etc.. We are on a "hello" basis with some. Our status as newbies exempts us from the hang-outs of the native population of Italian-Americans. That's fine. Neither Peter nor I like gossiping. 

Today is Sunday. The sky is that deep blue color of September dryness, stirred by a gentle breeze from Canada. The sun has gotten lower. The shadows are more dramatic. Shade abounds for us, the truly white. 

So, it was the perfect day to hop into the hybrid and chug over to our local cemetery. Like Mount Auburn Cemetery of nearby Cambridge, our local cemetery was laid out as a hilly arboretum in the early 1800's. Old specimen trees bear witness to the care taken then to invest in an environment conducive to grief, meditation and promenading. 

The relationship to Death of those early designers and visitors to cemeteries was not contentious. It was accepting. Lives were shorter and often harder. Their time was not punctuated by an inevitable end in an assisted living community, a nursing home and an intensive care unit. That older and wiser relationship with Death lives on in the gracefully manicured beauty of our local cemetery.

Peter and I walked along our familiar route today. The north side of the large ornamental pond. Past several gentle waterfalls. We rested in a pollinator garden at the far end of the stream that feeds the pond. The sun was warm and gentle. The nearby bees were sating themselves on nectar. A chipmunk ran across the path at our feet. Birdsong was woven into the sound of rustling leaves of a huge beech tree. I closed my eyes for a bit to smell and listen in an attempt to take it home with me. 

We are usually a chatty pair, Peter and I. Sometimes we even engage in playful bickering. We are not upset at being old men and acting our parts. Eighteen years have forged something solid between us. The cemetery is a place where we acknowledge that our time together will end. As we walk from the parking lot, our speech becomes quieter, more solemn. We share a certain peace, a mutual understanding.

We read out names, and sometimes share stories of people in our separate lives with those surnames. We remember people who have died. People we've loved. People we've disliked. Even famous people we never knew. And, while doing this today, we took deep breaths and felt the beauty of our lives there among the dead. It was an exceptionally beautiful day in the cemetery.