WALKING THROUGH CEMETERIES

Have you ever taken a walk through a cemetery just to take a walk? Some people do on a regular basis. Most people avoid cemeteries like the plaque: it's too close of a reminder of one's own mortality, I suspect. And so when we go to a cemetery, if we have no other choice, we go and get done whatever we have to do there as quickly as we can and leave, as quickly as we can. What we do not do is linger, walk around, look at the stone markers and monuments, read them slowly and thoughtfully, even reverently. Perhaps we should.

           

I can't say that I have a favorite cemetery. But if I had my choice about which one I'd prefer to walk through, it would be Union Cemetery back home. That's where my Mom and Dad, my Mom's parents (Grandma Lucia and Grandpa Francesco), and my Mom's two brothers (Uncle Dan and Uncle Dom) are buried. Many cousins are also buried there.

           

The grave markers in Union Cemetery are, in many instances, quite artistic pieces. There are large mausoleums that each hold several members of one family. There are huge granite edifices that speak of the wealth of the deceased. There are the little stone markers of the poor. The markers on my family's graves all note the name and the birth and death dates.  There is even a photograph on the grave marker.

           

When I was younger, I used to go to the cemetery with my parents to tend my grandparents' grave sites. I would walk around, the better to get out of work, and look at the photos on the other graves. Grandma, whom I never knew, was dressed in a period piece - she died in the late 1930s. Grandpa looked like he did when he came over from the old country, only sixty years older. Uncle Dan's picture was of him in the tux he wore at my parent's wedding.

           

Every grave marker tells a story. As a youngster I used to be fascinated about what stories lay behind all those names and all those pictures. I knew very little of those stories, even those of my own family. But I am who I am because of those people whose bodies are buried under all those markers at Union Cemetery in New Kensington, Pennsylvania -- all of them, not just my own family.

           

We are who we are because of all those who came before us. Others will be who they are and who they will become because we have passed through their lives in one way or another. The poet reminds us that no one of us is an island, alone unto ourselves. Cemeteries remind us that because we have never been alone and will never be alone, no matter how short or how long our lives, we will have an effect on others.

           

Our faith reminds us that we are called to live our lives as best we can so that we can not only live the life God calls and created us to live, but also because we leave a legacy to those who come after us. Jesus gave his life so that our life might be better. We are to live our lives so that the lives of others, all others, might be better. Cemeteries are reminders of life, of the lives of those who have died and who now live on in us, and that we live on, even today, in the lives of others.