October 17, 2007

• I took a walk over the hill today to pay a visit the long-dead relatives. The cemetery was gorgeous as usual, and the all the pampered old maples were in their full autumn glory.

  It always takes me a few minutes to find what I'm looking for in that place, mostly because i usually just stumble off the path through the woods which connects my neighborhood to the back of the park, and I don't bother with a map. Don't need no stinking map, it's better to just wander and observe, and listen. The people there have been dead for so long that there is kind of a hush over the whole place (and maybe the occasional spectral snore, heh). The trees and squirrels are louder. Don't get me started on new cemeteries, what a ruckus, ugh. At any rate, it usually takes some crisscrossing and backtracking and wandering about until I can find what I'm looking for.

  Funny thing about those Farquhars, though- I can never get to their little grove directly. I always end up going in a big loop and getting all turned around, no matter how many times I make note of the direction I'm going or surrounding landmarks. Today i actually thought for a brief moment that somebody might have rearranged things on me. And always when I've just about come to a point where I'm like, screw it, I'm turning back home, I look over a little knoll or just past a tree and there they are. Robert, Mary, Little Lovejoy Leonard.

  So anyways, had a nice visit. First time I've said hello to great-great grandparents since Mum and I found his passport, photo, and visa for a visit to scotland from 90 years ago. Inside it says: "reason for travel: to visit relatives." The photo shows a distinguished looking old fellow with bristly hair and grey eyes. I sat and watched the squirrels hop around on my great-great auntie? jennie's headstone, made note of the lovely weather and foliage, and filled them all in on what's happened (the relatives, not the squirrels; the squirrels don't care. Of course, maybe the dead don't, either) since they all kicked the bucket.

  I bet nobody else visits them anymore. Come to think of it, most of the people buried there have been dead for so long- some going on a century and a half- that there's nobody left living to really pester them anymore. Except for the squirrels, and me tramping all over hill and dale. There's my great grandparents, who I first found by accident, and have managed to only find by accident every visit since, and for them there's maybe five people left in the world who know only a very little about what their lives were like. So, i wander around the cemetery and wonder about everybody else's story, all these long-dead people who are somebody's forgotten relatives, who maybe wore funny hats or had children or fell in love or had terrible debt or lived in houses with fancy furniture. I guess it could be depressing, to think of how time has made them anonymous, their legacies reduced to a faded name on a mossy stone. Living, or at least the all the niggling details, seems much less significant when you put it into that perspective.

  But then again, it's a nice thought, to go back to the earth and become a simple thing, or just be nothing at all. Or maybe part of a grand old maple tree in autumn, with squirrels scampering underneath.

  • 7:25 pm
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