Graveyard

Nathan's ashes have been interred. So many decisions to make through all of this. So many of them linger in terms of wondering if the right thing was done, or said, etc. This one feels right. It's odd actually to have done something through all of this that feels right. Almost everything feels so wrong. Susan put together a really nice post with some pictures.

Here are the lyrics to a Loudon Wainwright III song. His music really resonates with me. I've known this song for a long time, and I've always been struck by its simple approach to tackling such a complex emotional thing as mortality. There is also imagery here that really strikes home. He writes of playing in a graveyard as a boy and of the wind beneath the graveyard trees. I remember playing in and near the small country cemetery near the church back where I grew up. It pleases me that, while much bigger, the cemetery where Nathan has been laid to rest has the same type of old cemetery feel...with the wind blowing beneath big trees.

Graveyard
Loudon Wainwright III

I go to the graveyard
Where we all must go
Among the dead and buried there
Just so I will know
What it's like beneath those trees
Listening to that wind

I go to the graveyard
ANd I'll be back again

I played in the graveyard
When I was just a boy
I'd run among the headstones
Myself I would enjoy
But I was young and hardly knew
What would happen then

I played in the graveyard
And I'll be back again

I walk through the graveyard
I read the headstones
So many dead and buried there
Each one all alone
An old man and an infant
And a little child of ten

I walk through the graveyard
I'll be back again

My father's in the graveyard
My dear mother too
I visit them with flowers
What else can I do?
I go to the graveyard
To remember them

I'm an orphan in the graveyard
And I'll be back again

I go to the graveyard
Where we all must go