Death is in the air...

A little while back we found out that the whole idea of women not being allowed to visit the grave is just more cultural codswallop created by people who believe in too many superstitions and too little truths. Women are only prohibited to visit the grave as they are more likely to wail and express their emotions in less than savoury ways (again other cultural creations come into play here, further blurring the already fuzzy line between religion and culture…). The simple fact is that women are allowed to visit the grave provided they act with decorum and composure. Since discovering this, my mum has had the intention to visit my granddad’s grave, and so it was on Monday that me, my mum and my grandma went to visit the graveyard. Now someone somewhere had a weird epiphany of some sort and decided that the perfect spot for building a high school would be right next to a graveyard, thus the journey to the graveyard was one I had passed twice a day, five days a week for five years of my life. It seemed the journey itself was full of death, we passed a dead bird lying on someone’s garden wall, its corpse perfectly undamaged. An unfortunate, unidentifiable creature had met its demise under a car, the only clue suggesting that the gruesome mess was in fact once an animal was a prominent tail, which could only belong to a squirrel. When we got to the grave the perfectly glorious weather surprised me, I suppose I was expecting it to be all dark and gloomy or something. After parking the car we followed my grandma to where my granddads grave was. Whilst carefully walking past all the graves, I made a conscious effort to avoid stepping on any of the mounds. Suddenly I comprehended the enormity of the situation, there were hundreds of dead people under my feet, the thought flashed for a mere moment but the unpleasant feeling it left behind lingered for much longer. Considering my current situation such thoughts were to be expected, I was in a graveyard after all, but when you look in front of you and see rows and rows of gravestones and the same view watches you from behind, you realise that these were all living breathing people once upon a time, with their own share of worries and happiness. It’s quite a disconcerting thought to say the least. We stopped at a grey grave stone with faint traces of once black letters only just representing my granddads name, the patch of land in front of it looked so plain and sad in comparison to its neighbours. My mum opened the book we had brought with us that had in all the prayers that one should say when visiting the graveyard and the three of us began praying. A sudden wave of emotion came over me as I began uttering the Arabic words and I could feel my vision blurring behind a wall of tears. Dammit. I looked to the sky to try and suppress the tears but was only met with blue skies and sunshine. The weather was mocking me. I looked behind me and only saw more gravestones standing row after row. I’m not quite sure but I think at this point I may have stamped my foot in frustration as the wall of tears gave way and began to make their way down my face. I asked my mum what prayer was next and was amazed to see her eyes were dry, although her voice faltered as she told me what to read next. I remember thinking that she must have had heaps of will power to not cry, after all it was her father’s grave. It made me wonder if I could be so strong if it was me in her position, I couldn’t bring myself to think what I would do. Then there was my grandma, she was visiting her husband’s grave after so many years and she was able to withhold her tears, I had to admire them both at that moment. I looked around at the surrounding graves and saw a bouquet of the brightest most pinkest roses I’ve ever seen sitting on a flawless black gravestone. I looked at the gravestone, the girl was two days old when she died in 1989, another one, the occupant was 29 years old and so all the gravestones described the residents of the patch of land in front of them. After saying the prayers and standing in relatively silent contemplation we made our way back to the car. As we sat in I saw a grave surrounded by soft toys, another child. I glanced at the sign for the cemetery, a lone spider web was blowing lightly in the gentle breeze, I contemplated taking a picture of it on my phone, it would have made a brilliant photo, but I decided against it. After having seen the eventual fate of every human being, taking a photo just seemed so irrelevant…