****** TRIGGER WARNING******
This post deals with the subject of death, and although I think that the overall message is worth discussing, I respectfully wish to warn you that some may find this post to be upsetting. Should you choose not to proceed through this one, I look forward to your return next time.
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Towards the end of winter last year, we had an unseasonably nice day that also happened to fall on a weekend. Finally able to enjoy venturing out of the house again, The Guy and I were looking for something fun to do. But after contemplating how crowded the zoo would be, and realizing that most of the farms near us were still closed, I suggested that we do something different, and visit the local historic cemetery.
Yes I did.
“A… cemetery…” The Guy said slowly, as if he were trying to mentally absorb the meaning of the words.
“Yes” I said. “Where they bury people.”
“Why would we do that?” he asked.
“Why not?” I asked back.
And because he is exactly my type of person, off we went to the cemetery, taking the kids with us.
We spent the next four hours wandering through the rows of headstones, while the kids did crayon rubbings over the words. The Guy and I chatted about the husbands and wives who were buried side by side, and contemplated what life must have been like for them to have either lived decades without each other, or passed away only days apart. We saw the headstones of families that clearly had died in wealth, while others eluded to the fact that they most likely died while living in poverty. There were men with multiple wives resting next to them; proof of the intimate moments they had gone on to lead — one after another — without the one that they had left behind. And then there were families with centuries of descendants who had died decades before others were born, all grouped together; sharing nothing more in common then a last name, an ending fate, and the fact that their physical resting place will spent forever together.