I visit dead people or why to visit Bournemouth in the winter

So I've decided that the week of All Souls Day and Día de los Muertos is the perfect week for my first travel related blog. Why you may ask, well it's because one of the places I like to visit on my travels is cemeteries. Now this may make you think that I'm some kind of closet goth or just bizarrely death obsessed. I may own more than one Nick Cave album, like vampire tales that don't involve glitter paint and the occasional bit of B grade horror, own many a black t-shirt and black nail polish, and be writing a thesis on a novel about the death of the human race. However those who know me know that a closet goth I am not- My Nick Cave albums are matched by Polyphonic Spree albums, my vampires and B Grade horror are matched with 80s teen comedies and the occasional classic romance, my black t-shirt have crazy designs on them and I also own pink nail polish (the thesis I can't defend but everyone needs some death focus on occasion).

So why the cemeteries? Well in another life with a different PhD thesis, I'd be a social historian and I think that the way people bury their dead tells us a lot about how they live their lives. I recently read a fascinating history of London called Necropolis: London and its Dead and it was compelling to see the plans for how to house the dead of a growing metropolis and the people enacting these plans. There were tales of graves diggers, plague pits, the recycling of burial plots, crazy ploys to solve the lack of burial space and people, like Mrs Isabella Holmes, who fought for the beautification of London's cemeteries. It's totally worth the read and totally reinforced my plans to see many a cemetery on my upcoming trip overseas.

You'll notice I use the word cemetery not graveyard. As the minister at my church reminds us at every event held in the church's cemetery, cemetery (which came into common use in the late 12th or early 13th century- yes I did my research- thank you dictionary.com) comes from the Greek word koimētḗrion which means resting place. I think that whatever your religious belief there is something beautifully poetic about the notion of a resting place for the dead. Graveyard, which was coined in the 18th century, means pretty much what you think it means- a yard full of dead things- and there is little poetry there.

Cemeteries tell you how people thought about death and what religions people followed and what group/military affiliations people held. From cemeteries you can also infer how people thought about the elderly, the sick, the outsider and children. You can see whether they feared death or embraced it as part of life and see the amount of respect they have for their dead or alternatively the amount of fear they have of the perceived ghosts of their dead. They can be beautiful monuments to the lives of people from hundreds of years ago and can tell stories of great pathos and great love. The same goes for the cemeteries that contain no dead- military cemeteries to the soldiers who died in foreign wars tells you about the place and concept of war, and monuments such as the small one in Thames Embankment Garden in the London which is devoted to the "fallen" women who took their lives in London's rivers in the late 19th century tell you about the romanticism that people can associate with tragedy. Pausing at the graves of those you admire can allow you to catch a moment and remember their contribution to the world- this allowed a brief pause of reflection in an otherwise miserable winter trip I once took to Bournemouth as I stood at the grave of Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft. Even looking down as you pass a cemetery can unveil hidden historical treasures- the photo that comes with this blog is of a footpath made of headstones in the town of Chester on the English side of the northern end of the English/Welsh border, during the Victorian era people pulled up the headstones because they thought them morbid and instead of wasting the stone used it to make a cheerful path- you can make your own call on the spooky vibe that comes from walking on headstones but personally I think the path is more morbid than the cemetery must have been.

I don't advocate the constant memorialising of our dead to the point of near ancestor worship but visiting a cemetery, even one that contains no people you know or know of, can be a window into another time, and it can allow for a brief reflection both on the shortness of our lives in this world and where we think that shortness ends. So do yourself a favour when you next fare out into the big bad world, stop by a cemetery and pause a moment in thought.