charles barrow's writing

I like visiting graveyards, churchyards, cemeteries, call them what you will. I find them fascinating. They are full of stories, if you pause long enough to witness them, and I find that inspiring. I've posted photos of headstones, and gravestones here before. They have often had a quirk to them, of size, shape, or style. This one is different in as much as it's been cracked wide open by the tree growing through it. The tree roots have shattered the stones. I mentioned, in a previous post, that it wasn't unknown for people to be buried clutching an acorn, so that even in death they might feed and nourish an oak tree to grow out of the heart of them.    Photo is the author's own

I've always enjoyed visiting cemeteries, or wandering around them I should say. No one near and dear to me has ever been buried in a cemetery, we're all about cremation in my gang, so I have never had a destination grave that I could deliver flowers to, a headstone that I could reflect silently beside; one that records the barest details of a loved one's life. My forebears' ashes float out at sea or, rather, feed the fish at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe that's why I enjoy a stroll through a graveyard, I'm not emotionally invested. I am always intrigued though; by the choice of marker (stone, granite, cross, statue, urn), how well it's tended (fresh/wilted flowers, plastic ornaments, polished marble), the occupant's names that always seem to conjure Victorian maiden aunts, and Edwardian railway porters, and of course those all important bookend dates (enviably distant cousins, or woefully close siblings) that both start and finish all of our stories. My...