Cemetery

In cemeteries I have laughed, walked, taken pictures, spread flowers, eaten lunch, talked, thought, cleaned, and documented. (I was going to say "dug" but that doesn't sound right... but I have dug around gravestones that are half buried.)
My favorite are the old New England cemeteries, the dappled light amongst the trees, the soft mossy ground, the crumbling stones that read out old puritanical reproofs to live a better life.
Out west the cemeteries all seem so new, the stones covered in detailed etches of faces, horses, mountains and trucks (who wants a truck on their tombstone anyway?). It just isn't the same ambiance. I suppose, they tend to be a bit more somber too, considering on the newer gravestones I might see the name of someone I actually knew, instead of the long dead ancestors where the gravestone is all I know of them.
Names, dates and hopefully a precious line of something else, a poem, a commemoration, a title, from these a tiny bit of a history can be gleaned, understood or imagined. The death date of a baby son only a few days after the birth, and the grieving parents, only a row over, suddenly gain more life. Another tomb labeled "Mother, Wife, Friend" brings to mind my own mother. Was this long dead mother, loved for the same reasons mine is?
The quiet stones tell their own stories.