When I was a child I was frightened of cemeteries. I guess ghost stories had something to do with it. The thought of ethereal spirits or animated skeletal remains are scary to an active young mind. No one wants a bony finger tapping you on the shoulder.
We often confuse cemeteries as places for the dead, locations of grief when we lose a loved one, but they are also places for the living, where we can sit beside the last resting place of those we love and remember. I have spent some very sad moments in cemeteries but equally some very consoling and peaceful moments.
On another level, I find cemeteries evocative of the lives of others. A kind of people watching of the dead. Whether long or short, a life engraved on a memorial stone offers a glimpse of that person, even if only the dates between their birth and death show the time in which they lived. Often it shows who they loved and lived with. Sometimes a little window on what they did. All together these snippets of a life can create a small memory of that person even when we did not know them. When we lose someone dear to us, we are often told to say their name as a way to keep their memory alive. To remember them, to talk about them. Reading memorial stones is a way to do this for our forebears and even strangers.
I have a particular love of cemeteries and as I am currently in Paris I decided to pay a visit to Père Lachaise cemetery in the 20th arrondissement. It is an enormous cemetery with higgledy piggledy ‘streets’ of tombs to browse ordinary Parisians, many celebrities and renowned persons. I was particularly on the look out for three: Jim Morrison of The Doors, Edith Piaf, and Oscar Wilde.
The cemetery is a bit of a labyrinth but with some careful map reading I found all three. Morrison and Piaf are both off the main thoroughfares but are reasonably easy to spot, both by the numbers of visitors and the floral and other gifts left by admirers.
Oscar Wilde’s last resting place is very grand and in an art nouveau style. It has been shrouded in a Perspex shield with a notice which politely asks that visitors not deface the screen. And yet it is covered in lipstick kisses. I was left wondering what Mr Wilde would have thought about such female attention.
Significantly Different 