Meet You at the Cemetery gates

There are certain places that have a real attraction to us – we love the wilds of Scotland, city centres, canals, bridges, harbours, beaches and cemeteries.
 
Yep that’s not a typo, cemeteries. We find ourselves time and again if we’re out and about popping into places that many people probably only go to when they have to and usually at incredibly sad times.
 
Like many people we’ve had our fair share of those sad times, some very recently, however there is also an undeniable sense of peace and also some fascinating things to see.
 
Like a lot of things we didn’t set out with a deliberate aim of visiting places that many people associate with sadness, it was another time when on reflection it dawned on us we do seem to visit a lot of graveyard, cemeteries and memorials.
 
From our honeymoon in Austria admiring the neatly kept memorials and shrines right through to the ceremonial war graves on the battlefields of France and Belgium. From our local churchyard with graves going back to around the start of the 17th century to the more austere municipal burial grounds, we’ve visited a wide range of final resting spots. 

We don’t do it as a celebration of the macabre or other people’s sorrows, there’s great beauty to a number of them and also the chance for some peaceful moments of reflection and, on the odd occasion, some unique photographic opportunities. And a lot more too.
 
In an age when people moan about the lack of community and “looking after each other” there’s a bit of a lesson to be learnt from even the briefest of visits to a cemetery. Because it may not necessarily be your family whose graves and headstones are there but the people that lived where you live now, going back generations, who brought up their families or lived alone but who played a part in some way to the place you now call home.

​Think of the history, the richness and stories. As Morrissey eloquently sang “all those people, all those lives, where are they now?”
 
Why not go and find out?