Of death

The cemetery is devoid of life. Hardly. I went yesterday after not having been for a long while. There was life, the birds flying around, the flowers swaying in the wind, the people who came to reminisce about their departed loved ones. The cemetery has always been a sort of magnifying glass, a solitary person standing over a gravestone seems like the loneliest person in the world, the quietness of the cemetery seems like the loudest sound you could ever hear. It’s a place of irony. The place conveys fear, sadness but yet there’s more there. I saw a child giggle as she tried to skip over a mud puddle. I also realised yesterday that I had encountered a life which had endured life twice over. I wondered if some decisions made were due to an inability to cope with loneliness, I wondered about how difficult it was to cope, twice over. I wondered if the pain was worth the “better to have loved and lost”. 

I looked over at the neat rows of headstones and felt thankful that I never had to see death like those who saw death in war, like those who had to stand over graves piled one atop the other….

Droplets of rain fell from the sky, and mum remarked that it always rained whenever we came. It started pouring, like one of those movies with people standing at a grave dressed in their darkest suits. Then after a little while, the sunlight broke through the dense grey, a reminder perhaps, of hope.