The End

I have a thing for graveyards. When we lived in Marks we would go visit my deceased grandparents what seemed like weekly. My grandmother was a true southern belle perfectionist so when my grandfather died she had both their tombstones made so they would match. They are the first plot when you drive up with a sweet tree and a bench that we use to sit and eat lunch on. I would walk up and down the aisles reading the stories and looking for freshly laid dirt and flowers. My favorite was a tombstone with a picture of a little girl, about my age at the time, with her hair curled in pigtails. She had died while fetching a stray ball across a busy street when a truck hit her. Her plot was in the back of the cemetery, and I always thought she deserved to be closer up to the front.
After my sophomore year in high school I went to Scotland for a couple of weeks and my favorite part was visiting a ruined abbey and reading the hundreds of tombstones there dating back to the 19th century. They were beautiful and heart wrenching stories of monks, sailors, mothers, sons, and infants. We stayed there for hours reading as many as we could.
While riding around in the Australian country I caught a glimpse of this cemetery and had to stop. I hope it’s not disrespectful to take pictures of tombstones and graveyards, I guess I just see beauty in death. On this side of Heaven death gives life meaning. It’s the unknown eminent end to every being. The beauty is knowing that death is not the end of our story. In the midst of death and decay I snap this shot to hold on to all we have: hope and faith in the life to come.