Cemetery Walking

By Andrea Scarpino

 

I like to think we all come to the cemetery for our own reason, the older man who lingers by a grave not far from his car, the power walking women, their arms swinging with purpose and strength, the teenage boy cutting through to the woods—even the white doe, who I imagine enjoys the sanctuary, the quiet space in the middle of town where hunters aren’t allowed, where the dead are mostly quiet.

 

I learned to ride a bicycle in the cemetery near our house in Massachusetts, its wide, near-empty streets the perfect place for my step-dad to remove my bicycle’s training wheels. One memorable early trip, giddy with my own independence, I pedaled farther and farther away from my mom and step-dad as they pushed my brother in his carriage. I remember the wind in my face. I remember laughing. And then I turned around to see how much distance I had covered, and rode straight into a tree. I remember lying in the grass gasping for air, and my step-dad arriving finally to pick me up, set my bike upright.

 

Almost every time I’ve gone to Paris, I’ve made a special trip to visit Montparnasse Cemetery and the graves of Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre. Cigarettes, metro stubs, pieces of gravel, handwritten notes, a copy of one of their books, are always placed carefully on their graves. In Pere Lachaise, Oscar Wilde’s tombstone is covered with lipstick kisses and flower bouquets. In New Mexico, my friend Kate brought me to a cemetery near Georgia O’Keefe’s home: dry desert landscape, overly saturated blue and purple silk flowers, gravestones cracked as if by the heat, cactus growing around untended plots. We took photograph after photograph, sun bearing down around us. In Morocco, I was about to step through a cemetery gate when a woman pulled up in her car, waved me over, told me I shouldn’t go inside because women had been raped in there. I heeded her advice, peered over the stone gate, and walked away.

 

Almost every place I’ve visited or lived, I’ve found a cemetery to spend an hour, an afternoon. I’ve done grave rubbings, moving charcoal across white sheets of paper to see the gravestone’s image magically emerge. I’ve listened to Halloween stories of famous murders and suicides told by animated storytellers, my back pressed against a gravestone. I’ve listened to orchestral music, picnicked, brought flowers for my father, pushed the strollers of kids I was babysitting. And when I need some perspective, some exercise, I walk through Marquette’s cemetery, watch for red-headed woodpeckers, the white doe, watch the Mallard ducks and Canadian geese. Watch the other cemetery walkers, imagine what we each want from our visit, what we each hope to see.