On spending my Saturday afternoon walking around both the East and West sides of Highgate Cemetery, I couldn’t help but think of how extravagant and misplaced death can be. Row upon row of tombstones, mammoth works of sculpted art and mausoleums bigger than my studio flat! Each structure etched with the names of generations gone and with vague eery hints of who they might have been in their time. Really this is all that remains after we are gone. Perhaps cemeteries provide comfort to the direct descendents and close families, but skip a few generations and let time pass, what’s their purpose? Maybe they are meant to serve as physical reminders of our mortality. Showing us what remains when our souls have departed this world. Human souls replaced with stone in a garden of remembrance. Are cemeteries timeless reminders of our ego’s yearning to be immortalised… not forgotten?
“Those in our lives who are dying, or who have died, teach us about the value of living. They remind us not to take our lives for granted, but to live each moment of life to its fullest, and to remember that our own small lives form of a part of a greater whole” (Dr. Armstrong, 2008).
Mindfully Marvellous 