A Graveyard In Autumn

I walk past the homes in my neighborhood, their lawns covered with Styrofoam tombstones and inflatable ghosts. I walk away from this culture where even death is a commodity and a brand, into a more serious attempt at dealing with the subject of mortality. I find myself in a graveyard in autumn.

The trees stand in suitably somber garb, boughs bent, weeping leaves upon the ground as if to provide a blanket for the dead. Squirrels squawk in protest at the trees’ surrender of the leaves they use as camouflage against the hawks and eagles. They care not for the dead beneath them. They are far more pragmatic, burying only nuts and seeds.

When we stroll past the tombstones and read the dates, we tend to think of death as taking the young as well as the old. But every single one of them was young once, death merely allowed some of them to age before harvesting them. The luckiest of us are but children punished for the crime of growing old.