Din among the Dead or No peace for those who rest in peace!

The other day I went to the cemetery to pay my respects at my mother’s grave, as I have done for many years now since she passed away, and what met my eyes and ears was, to put it simply, a scene of commotion and convulsion. For a city of the dead, there was a high level of activity going on, shattering the peace not only of the dead but of the living too. All around changes had been wrought in the landscape since my last visit there some weeks back, evidently to accommodate more dead persons within an area of land that had remained the same as the numbers of the dead had grown over the years; naturally, if there's one thing that the living never stop doing it's dying! That's why undertakers will never be out of a job. But I digress...

Entrance to the World of the Dead

The changes that had come about were so great that I hardly recognised the landscape around me. Since my mother had been laid to rest there in 1987, more and more land that up till then had been unused and unoccupied, covered in grass and trees, had had to be brought into use to accommodate more graves. When my dear mother went into the ground well before the biblical three score years and ten, the section of the cemetery she was buried in was only about half full, if that. Over the intervening years I have seen that section fill up with graves till it could take no more and I have then seen another site across the way and over to the right denuded of its vegetation and opened up for fresh graves. As that site too has spread and filled up, another patch, on higher ground immediately opposite the site where my mother is buried, has been commandeered for further graves. The turf has gone, the trees have been felled, and the grateful dead have moved in to populate it.  And so it has gone on. With every further visit of mine there, the necropolis before me is ever bigger, enhanced by an intake of many more deceased who have come to the end of a road that we all must take and which leads to the same place. Gosh, I wonder where I'll end up?!

But on this last visit of mine, there were major changes afoot, substantial reconstruction and expansion, re-alignments and fencing-off, upgrading of simple rustic paths into mini-roads, one-way systems, and embankments. Added to that was the ‘refurbishment’ of the Jewish section, with a stockade-like perimeter filled with thousands of stone fragments and encased in a wire enclosure around the perimeter wall. A long low edifice of marble, with rows of compartments that I supposed were ossuaries inside it, fronted by small glass doors and vigil boxes, that curved its way from the catholic section round to the orthodox section has sprung up - a veritable Roman-style structure that somehow looks out of place with its surroundings. There's been a newly enclosed area of sunken ground housing the very old graves which are still being preserved, perhaps because of their historical significance, I’m not sure. And new routes have been cut through the cemetery to accommodate the motor-car and avoid congestion; yes, folks, even in a graveyard there can be traffic jams!

Sunlight upon tree-shaded graves

With all this renovation and reconstruction going on, the landscape was peppered with diggers, trucks, cement-mixers and earth-moving equipment in general, all accompanied by an infernal din calculated to wake the dead and unhinge the living! The place was more a construction site than a place of rest, and with a funeral then taking place to boot, there was more activity and noise in the damn place than on any high street or school playground! The dead must have been turning in their graves! 

Anyway, I then did what I came to do. I lit a candle, after several abortive attempts thanks to a lusty wind blowing the match out each time, and positioned it in the vigil box, placed the flowers I had brought in various locations around the cross, re-arranged more neatly what was already there and generally tidied everything so that I left her grave neater and sprucer than I had found it. After a brief prayer, a few words of reverence and a moment of silence, I slowly moved off and made my way back to my car. A few minutes later I had left behind me this noisy bustling metropolis of the dead and was driving back home through… noisy bustling streets! I would be back soon, hopefully as a visitor still rather than as a resident (!), though who can be sure of anything  when one is no spring chicken anymore and has more reason to look back than forward! In life we are constantly aware of death but are never ready for it.


Rest in peace/Requiescat in pace, Mother... I've missed you, the time we had together was too short and your life too brief.