The thing about life is that one day we all will be dead. It is a humbling feeling to know that eventually at a time not usually of your own choosing your body will become mutinous and you will die. It is the most natural thing to do and aside from being born the only other certainty we all share. I have been accused of being morbid for much of my life and while I may have a morbid curiosity, my fascination with death and dying is more reverence of life than anything else.

The other day someone indirectly questioned my lack of faith by wondering how it could be that someone can get up every day and live thinking that there is nothing after life but nothingness. Had I been given the opportunity to answer, I likely would have turned the question on them and asked them what their motivation was for today knowing they have an eternity to live? Both questions imply a certain amount of external motivation I suppose, yet the urgency of death being ever present in my mind is a constant reminder to make every day count. Sadly, I still fall quite short of my goal to live each day as if it were my last, but to me that is quintessentially human.

It never ceases to amaze me how people can compartmentalize their thoughts so well that mortality rarely if ever crosses their minds. We are bombarded with images of death and dying all day and if these deaths don’t fit into our “Monkey Sphere” the most common response to death is indifference. In America especially we are shielded from the ramifications of death. Dying in the US is typically a sterile hospital experience much like our births. Perhaps there is some crying and pain at both, but more over after the shock wears off, we typically push these emotions to the back of our mind.

Some people go to church to be closer to God; I go to cemeteries to be closer to humanity. To me there is nothing more powerful than to walk amongst the dead in remembrance of people I did not know. Eternal life exists in our memories and imaginations. This type of immortality is so much more effervescent than the possibility of sitting on a cloud at the knees of an angry deity. Weaving through the memorials to lives ended and standing just feet above their once vital bodies is compelling to me in a way that a rousing sermon might be to others.

Admiring the graves of the dead has always been an activity for me. As a small child I would beg my parents to stop when we passed new and interesting grave yards so I could appreciate the tall spires, gothic crypts or small cold markers of our ancestors. My fondest memories of growing up were from when every weekend in the summer my family would spend in Sandusky on my father’s boat. While we could swim and go for boat rides or even head over to Cedar Point for the day, I would always plead with my father to take us to Johnson Island so I could view again the Confederate cemetery surrounded by cottages and the Sandusky Bay. The fact that so many of the graves were marked as unknown soldiers resonated with me even when I was as young as 7 or 8.

I have always held the modern memorial garden in a place of contempt within my heart for the pure convenience associated with the grounds-keeping being easier with flat markers. This is surely not very fair of me since all the people interred at these gardens had family that loved them and wanted to memorialize them in more modest ways than flow with my own dramatic tastes.

The art of burial markers has always fascinated me. Weeping angles and other symbols from the past have always held my attention at sites like Lakeview and Riverside cemeteries’. I could spend hours wandering through the myriad of monuments. The small gardens planted atop the modest stones always struck me as the most beautiful and heart felt remembrances. Not everyone could afford the marble and granite markers, but a few plants were with in most people’s reach and would always ignite my own imagination wondering who it was I was standing above and what they meant to the planter.

We all deal with our anxieties and fears in different ways. For me, I prefer to keep this right out in the open for all to see. This characteristic in me is quite off-putting for many since my conversations somehow always wind to my fascination with death and dying. I find this to be quite similar to many people’s frank discussions of their own faith. I get incredibly uncomfortable when one starts telling me about their relationship with their chosen deity much as if I were discussing with them the merits of an elaborate funeral pyre. In the end we all hold different aspects of life dear and close to our hearts. I choose to keep the fragility of life in the forefront of my mind and heed the advice of my favorite epitaph:

Remember friend as you walk by
As you are now so once was I
As I am now you will surely be
Prepare thyself to follow me.