What do you do during your free time? I like brisk walking, especially in a cemetery. Well, my mum doesn’t like it and my friends think I’m weird. I still go there anyway. When your whole day is surrounded by the hustle and bustle of the city and all you do is work your brain off, you need a little peace.

As the noise dies down, the walk to the graveyard always comes with a soothing sensation. The dead stay dead, and the living stay afar. A dead silence rushes through the rusty iron gates to fill your ear canal. Trees waving, leaves rustling, sun shining, crows cawing, you’re with mother nature and her beautiful collection of corpses. Grey tombstones and vibrant flowers make up the rest of the scene, with a sprinkle of animated bodies walking about.

Years… names… mothers, grandfathers, children. They were all once alive. Countless untold stories, passed down skills and such are now buried and gone because they’re six feet under. Dead, to be precise. They lived a happy life (or so I hope) and eventually died of illnesses, old age, heartbreaks or in a battlefield. Good or evil, they all crumbled under the wrath of time or did they… 

Now and then, you’ll find people who lived till their 20s, teens or even younger than that. After a few trips to several graveyards, you’ll realize the closer you are to a war zone, the more kinder¹ fill the land. What did they do to deserve this fate? I wonder what life they could have gotten instead of sleeping here on hardwood so young. Even naughty children don’t die, they just get coal. The red cloak figure must not have been Santa that year.

Walking up to the fellow living, you see them, one hand holding a watering can and another a colourful bouquet. They are not alone, someone or something is with them, comforting and listening to them. An old man chatting with his wife. Kids having fun around their dad. A lady wearing black standing with her husband. There’s no need to see, they feel it. 

From rock to moss, some are forgotten. But today, as I walk past your resting place, I will remember you.

Death shouldn’t be a taboo, when it’s such a pretty end to our lives. Some think that we’ll move on to a better place, and others think we’ll get a second chance. I think that we get to rest peacefully. The dead left their marks, and we hold onto it tightly for as long as we can. Now, isn’t all of that a sweet ending? I really love my “spooky” cemeteries. They are my secret little world where everything stops moving except for my mind. When it’s time, mine will too. 

One day, would you like to go to Death’s nursery with me?

¹ German word for children