This is sad because, as Fr. Damien of Molokai said, a cemetery can be the best book of meditation. One parish where I attend Mass has a cemetery next to the church, and I have found it a salutary practice to walk through it after Mass and pray my rosary. Morbid? I think not. I think it was St. Benedict who said that we ought to keep death before us daily. There are few better ways of doing this than by going by stone marker after stone marker of our end on this earth. This is not sad, because reality is Truth, and Truth is a good thing; it is what sets us free. The reality is, we will die. All of us will someday be that person below that marker.
It first reminds me of something that I would rather forget — there isn’t much time. I am 44, and I can’t walk far in a cemetery before I come across men and women — and children — who were dead long before the age I am now. “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart” (Ps 90:12). When I see the tombstone of a man who died at my age, or 40, or 30, I think, “Was he ready?” Then I think, “Am I?” Ready for the accounting that I must make, as the prayer to St. Joseph says, of time ill spent, of talents unemployed, of good undone and of my empty pride in success? Ready to account for the petty grudges held, the excuses obstinately clung to, the self-righteousness and self-justification? Ready to account for what I have said — and not said — to others? For how I have treated my wife, my father and mother, my brothers and sisters? For how I have raised my children? Ready to account for what I believe? Ready to meet the God who is a “consuming fire” (Heb 12:29)?
When did I last make a good confession? When did I last meditate on the Four Last Things?
I look at these gravestones and think, “Who came to their funeral?” Not their checkbooks, or their vacation homes; not their cars, or their portfolios; not their trophies or cable television. Family? I hope. Friends? If they cared enough to have them.
I look at family plots and see where mothers and fathers have buried children, sometimes children so young they weren’t even named. I see where one spouse has buried another. And I complain about traffic? About my work? About the stain on my jacket?
And if the light of this walk has cast many shadows on my life, it also can shed some light. For it reminds me that many things I think are so important are really nothing, are excrement as St. Paul said. What does the opinion of others matter now to these, some whose markers are so old and worn one can’t even read them? Only Truth goes past that door.
In the cemetery where I walk, there is the grave of F. Scott Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940), the embodiment and the portrayer of the Jazz Age, world-famous author and screenwriter, one of the first of that peculiar American breed, a “personality.” Next to him lies Elizabeth Delahant (September 10, 1886 – December 4, 1887). They are equals now; both worth all the suffering of Christ.
Besides reminding me of death, a walk in the graveyard also reminds me of the dead. Praying for the dead is one of the acts of mercy. How long does it take to pray, “May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace,” as I pass a cemetery? A look in the mirror of a tombstone has made me worry. Two minutes of real honesty — real honesty — shows me that I’m not a saint. And only saints get into Heaven. So I hope others don’t forget me when I die. I don’t want them to assume — as I too often do with the dead — that the dead have it made. I want others praying for me for as long as possible, even if that other person is some odd middle-aged man who happens to see my name on a tombstone 50 years from now, and doesn’t know who the heck I am — who the heck I was — but knows that I still need prayers.
This walk has woken me up. I pray that it will help me rest in peace.
© Copyright 2005 Catholic Exchange
Robert Greving is a husband and teacher from Germantown, Maryland.
