Morning Reflections by a Cape Cod Cemetery

These last few days I’ve been waking up in time to watch the sunrise, the warm pink brush strokes slowly edging up the morning sky. As I sit quietly, the rising glow begins to sparkle on the gold and orange leaves of the September trees, the crows begin their clamor, and before me, the rows of moss-covered stones come alive with the glistening morning dew.

I’m enjoying a much-needed vacation on Cape Cod, staying in a lovely cedar shake cottage situated next to an old cemetery. This was a perfect discovery upon my arrival, as I have a long-held fascination with cemeteries. Even as young girl, I was drawn to them, captured by the powerful quietude and the spirit of the ancestors. Each morning I take a walk among these stones. Yes, I get my steps in. But it’s also a walking mediation for me, as I contemplate the mystery of being alive and the great unknown of transitioning.

When I was 7 years old, my Grandmother died unexpectedly from surgical complications and I witnessed the profound grief of my Mother. It was my first experience with death, and I desperately wanted to attend the traditional funeral and see my Grandmother once more. The adults deemed I was too young to understand any of it and was not allowed, throwing me into a 7-year-old rage. I can see now, of course, that my Mother needed her time to be a grieving daughter. Nor had my Mother and Father yet learned of my preternatural comfort with contemplating the big questions around the mysteries of life and death. Eventually they did.

As I walk these rows of gravestones each morning, some hundreds of years old, some vey recent, I imagine life stories and I ponder my relationship with death. It is after all, the greatest edge, that of the edge between life and death. And I think on all my experiences with profound grief. In my childhood strolls through graveyards, I would imagine the hands of the deceased reaching up, through the roots and dirt, out of the ground, a bit like a horror movie I realize, however this scenario was not at all frightening to me. It felt as though they wanted to teach me about death from the other side of the veil and that my grief was rooted with theirs.

I think of my time with my Mother while she was dying, spending her last days by her side. She died a painful, and far too early death from cancer, but in those last few days she had come to terms with dying and was no longer afraid. Her profound presence to death was exquisite. Being with her at that precise moment, both paradisiacal and heartbreaking, was a masterclass. The chasm of grief into which I was catapulted became my master tutor.

Why are we afraid of death? How might we become more curious about it? Why do we resist our grief? The answers await us at the edge…

I’d like to believe that I’m unafraid of death, the Great Unknown, and while I am walking in the cemetery, listening deeply, I almost do believe it.