Ernestly Speaking

Cemeteries can tell us a lot about the living. The practical Shakers of NH put markers flat to the ground so mowing was easy. If they needed a sidewalk elsewhere, they knew where to get what they needed. Victorian cemeteries have cherubs and angels, whereas 17th century graves might have skulls to show the seriousness of death.

In Bath Abbey, as in many large churches, the floors becomes the place of burial. Worshippers and visitors walk over the graves of benefactors, priests, and area worthies. Or maybe your dry bones were sent to a crypt to await the resurrection in the company of hundreds of other femurs, skulls, and ribs.

I was angry when I first saw Winston Churchill’s grave in Bladon, Oxfordshire. It was untended. Covered with weeds. It wasn’t until my next trip to London that I learned the Brits allow their cemeteries to “wild.” Tall grasses and indigenous flowers invite insects, birds, butterflies, and small animals to thrive even in urban spaces.

A recent return to the UK allowed me a wonderful stroll in Holywell Cemetery, part of Merton College, Oxford. It is maintained as a meadow, and contains the graves of Sir John Stainer (composer, 1901), Charles Williams (writer, Inkling, 1945), theologian Austin Farrer (1968), and Kenneth Grahame (Wind in the Willows author, 1932). Professors, a master draper, a publican, the founder of UNESCO, a soldier, an art critic, and more also rest among the foxes, bunnies, and bumblebees. A one-person homeless encampment was tucked away by a stone wall, hiding amid the vines.

A favorite stone proclaimed the members of one family, the Bullards. From 1885 to present times they have served as “Ambassadors, Writers, Teachers, Stout Hearts.”

Were we to write the caption for our own tombstones, I can think of few better epithets than “Stout Heart.” It describes a life lived boldly, bravely, and broadly. And what finer use of the land above our fainted form than to foster the lives of God’s smaller creatures?