The stories written on the stones invite us.
My husband and I bonded over a secret fascination with cemeteries. Some of our early "courtship" included strange dances and discussions around fallen tombstones in graveyards across the country. What stayed hidden by convention during the day somehow slipped from our lips in the silver colors and shadows of the graves at night.
We stop for cemeteries- for the questions, the stories, the names carved in stones that ring like talismans on a chain when we read them aloud. So we stopped at the Oak Hill Cemetery in Eutaw last week on our drive down to the beach. I left the sleeping-reading kids in the van and made a brief pilgramage, a short poetry reading of names (Bunion was prominent among them) across the crooked rows of gravestones.
Driving down to the beach alone with the kids only left me with a few moments of insipid longing for my husband. This stroll was one of them. Because cemetery-love and lore rests so snugly between us that neither needs to comment on what is so "cool"- it just is. I prefer the graves between us to the graves I discover alone.
Oak Hill Cemetery, now known as Mesopotamia Cemetery, was once home to the Mesopotamia Presbyterian Church. But the church moved, and the sacred dust remained. You can see more images and get driving directions from the Magnolias and Peaches website.
