Clouds, Rain & Headstones...

(Photo: Lisa Erin Brown)

I engaged in some escapism yesterday.  Immersed myself in a head clearing session in my favorite place for such times:  Laurel Grove Cemetery.  The peace.  The sounds of nature.  A breeze rustling leaves, making tattered shrouds of moss swing lazily back and forth from tree limbs.  The haunting call of birds floating on the air. Unseen squirrels skittering across dry tree flotsam. Some may think it macabre that I enjoy spending time in old graveyards. Spending time in a place that represents death to many.  Yes, cemeteries do represent death...but I don't think of it as the final period on one's life story.  It is a place for the remembrance of one chapter.  The final resting place for one "shell". Kind of a weigh station before moving on.

Some buried may still be around Laurel Grove.  I haven't encountered anyone during my visits, but I would not be entirely surprised if I were to.  The Bonaventure gets most of the attention here in Savannah.  It is indeed old. Historical.  It has a high place on my favorites list of cemeteries I have visited. For me the Laurel Grove Cemetery sits higher, in the top position.

I was up all of last night having another one of my frequent sleepless bouts.  I decided early in the morning that I wanted to pay Laurel Grove a visit.  The forecasts promised extremely overcast skies, with a 30% chance of thunderstorms.  I have been hoping to catch some time there when the skies were moody, and it appeared the time was ripe.  I was not to be disappointed. However, there was quite a bit of rain throughout my visit.  Most of the pictures I took are from my car.  I did get out to snap a few where the tree cover was rather thick, but every time I got out of the car to walk around a bit, the rain would pick up.  The majority of the grounds, including roads and pathways, are earthen.  The weather had softened the ground so that my feet would sink slightly.  The graves there are many and close together, so for whatever reason, my feet sinking a bit was kind of unsettling.  I decided that a walk-about wasn't in the cards, so I stayed inside the car for the rest of my time there.

I'll make my next visit on a drier day...

(Photo: Lisa Erin Brown)

"It is the will of God and Nature that these mortal bodies be laid aside, when the soul is to enter into real life;

'tis rather an embryo state, a preparation for living;

a man is not completely born until he be dead:

Why then should we grieve that a new child is born among the Immortals?"

~ Benjamin Franklin

(Photo: Lisa Erin Brown)

"Unable are the loved to die.

For love is immortality."

~ Emily Dickinson

(Photo: Lisa Erin Brown)

"For death is no more than a turning of us over 

from time to eternity."

~ William Penn

(Photo: Lisa Erin Brown)

"For death is but a passing phase of Life;

A change of dress, a disrobing;

A birth into the unborn again;

A commencing where we ended;

A starting where we stopped to rest;

A crossroad of Eternity;

A giving up of something, to possess all things.

The end of the unreal, the beginning of the real."

~ Edwin Leibfreed

(Photo: Lisa Erin Brown)

"Oh heart, if one should say to you that the soul perishes like the body, answer that the flower withers, but the seed remains."

~ Kahlil Gibran 

(Photo: Lisa Erin Brown)

"He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory,

abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than

the living man."

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

(Photo: Lisa Erin Brown)

"Death will be a great relief.

No more interviews."

~ Katherine Hepburn

(Photo: Lisa Erin Brown)

"In the night of death, hope sees a star, and

listening love can hear the rustle of a wing."

~ Robert Ingersoll

(Photo: Lisa Erin Brown)

"The grave itself is but a covered bridge,

leading from light to light,

through a brief darkness!"

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow