The days begin and end much the same way, with a dimness of light either ebbing towards or flowing from the darkness. It creates a melody of shadows, blurred together through time. There have been countless days I watched them dance from one moment to the next.
People have come and gone, carrying flowers and mementos, but mostly they are burdened with mourning. I have seen it fresh and raw only to scab over into something that resembles acceptance and sad fondness. Smiles blended with tears as people talked to the stones as if they had the faces of loved ones.
The stone that sits just beyond where I stand is nearly smooth with age, the name barely decipherable and the dates only allowing the knowledge of birth, however, death did occur as is evident by the stone itself, and it happened so long ago, it may as well have been in another world.
I stare at the name, and something akin to memory begins tapping my shoulder. I turn around only to see more stones as the sun sets behind the blazing maples that shade this place in the summer and freeze it on early autumn evenings such as this. The memorials begin to blend with the darkness and the shadows they cast throughout the day.
There are very few visitors anymore as the coming of new stones ceased. Some have now fallen into disrepair, broken and unreadable, all but forgotten except by a young man who comes every couple of weeks in the summer to mow. Now that autumn has arrived, however, I doubt I will ever see him again. Next summer, it will be a new young man, unless the powers that be decide that these stones are better left buried under the tall grass.
The living forget and the dead fade away. The sun sets and, while I know there's a chill in the air, I feel nothing except that tapping of distant memory that lies with the deteriorating stone etched with a name that, soon, will no longer exist.
{Find the Old Cemeteries scent here.}