Remembrance

Original post: Dušičky

           I open the gate and enter. The sun is low above the horizon, still surprisingly warm for November, but the air is cold, and you can sense in it that frost is just waiting for the sun to set. It doesn't have to wait long. The last rays take the heat with them. Sun hurries away as if it knows it doesn't belong here. I hide my hands shiveringly in my pockets. I step up slowly, wet clay sticking to my shoes.

            Autumn weather belongs to this time of year when we remember the souls that passed away. It sets the mood and helps to immerse us into ourselves. But most of all, it enables us to perceive the graves covered with candles and wreaths more intensely. Autumn is a symbol of change, and tombs are symbols of one of the most significant changes a person goes through. However, this change is often painful. The transition from one life to another can be devastating if one does not know how to meet it, does not understand it, resists it, fears it.

            I light a candle protecting the flame from starving wind with my hands. Then I hide it in a lantern. The dancing flame settles there. I get a little teary-eyed as I look at all those graves. Who knows where they wander now. I remember their journey on earth. Each seems significant to me.

            Some passed prematurely. Other grassy graves without candles and wreaths indicate that people had already forgotten them. But only people. Because nothing is lost in Creation. Their lives like threads, perhaps twisted and knotted somewhere, are waiting to be completed and unraveled; and stand equally beside all other threads.

            There are new, fresh graves here. They seem surprised that they suddenly appeared in the cemetery, standing a little uncertain, without a proper tombstone, only enclosed with planks. They have to get used to being here at all, they have to grow into the ground. What a sadly accurate picture of people. The living and the dead. Those who stand around such a grave, uncertain and taken aback, as well as those for whom that grave has been dug and stand on the other side of the river. All of them are waiting for the time to ripen and asking: What now?

            And time ripens. Hastily made graves change, get a real tombstone and seem to belong here. The people (hopefully) make their way slowly forwards too and learn to live anew.

            Then there is another type of grave that looks out of place. Actually, they are not graves yet, only empty shells. Concrete tombstones with name and date of birth. They also look a little uncertain that they are decaying, cracking, overgrowing with grass, while their time has not come yet. Also an image of people. Trying not to be surprised by death. At least physically. The problem is that such graves, when finally filled, look too much as if a person, even if only recently buried, has been lying there for a very long time...

            Traditionally, I light one candle for us living as well. After all, we are all on the same boat, no matter which side of the river we are standing. For us living, so that we don't rush to the grave when we don't belong to it yet. And that we do not live so that death surprises us. And most importantly, wherever we are, so that we never lose sight of our goal and have the courage and strength to keep moving forward. And upwards, to the Light.

 

           © Ludmila