The Loving Dead

I live in a graveyard. A beautiful and peaceful one. And often, in my busyness, I walk past the gravestones without paying them much attention. And often a restless guilt arises within me. As if they, the dead, are telling me I should walk among them with more care. And not just among them, but everywhere, as a living human being, I am fortunate enough to walk.

And so the other day I took a more careful look at who I was walking among.

If you want to know how to live, ask the grieving.

"Beloved wife". "Dear husband". "Devoted mother". It's all about love.  Every stone carries its mark.

I'm touched by how much people want to remember. How they hope they will never forget their loved ones.

But not everyone here is remembered. Not by the living.

At the edge of the graveyard, two stones lie side by side. Weathered by centuries of winters, I couldn't read a word. And by this I was saddened.

Time will forget us, it seems.

In a few hundred years, no one will remember who we are. The way we walked, laughed, spoke - not even our descendants will know. And yet there is something about the way these two lie next to each other that tells, even now, a story. Of togetherness and of a life shared.

And so I find myself wondering, if we will be forgotten by all those who come after us, will we ever be forgotten by those with whom we shared our lives?

Walking past another stone I read, “the people we love stay in our hearts forever.” And that feels true.

When our names dissolve, even on the hardest of stones, something of how we loved remains.

The birdsong in this garden is the same birdsong these two people would have woken to. Not the same birds, but the same song, carried by the same seasons. The land holds a memory of everyone who has ever loved it.

How curious that we spend so much of our lives elsewhere, when it's only here, in this present moment, that anything of us actually lasts.

These two forgotten people shared a life. And centuries later, a stranger stops at their stones and feels it.

Maybe the way we love never dies.