All Souls

The Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed [All Souls]

Many people regard cemeteries as a thin place where the veil between us and eternity is almost transparent.

It is a place where the living walk among the dead. Parents walk amid their children and children amid their parents. Spouses walk alone. This grave recalls an unforeseen death. The hundreds of thousands now for many families. That marker over the hill an illness that progressed more rapidly than anticipated. Here a grave of a childhood friend; there an unreconciled relationship. A cemetery stirs up longed-for reunions that won’t happen this side of life.

A quiet place where people laugh and cry and remember. A shrill place where family feuds are fought and past and present tragedies are rehearsed again. A place where lovers believe they are safe from peering eyes while the dead are reminded of their own past youthful loves.

Some family members visit regularly; others cannot bring themselves to visit the memories being too painful. Some of the dead no longer have anyone to visit and remember. Yet no one is ever alone here.

Cemeteries are consecrated ground, set aside for a sacred purpose. It is where the dead and the living wait. Wait in hope.

We often speak of ‘having hope’ as if it were a substance we can possess. But might hope be more like a space we expand and fill up or a field to be cultivated with our sorrow and doubts, our suffering and longings and face, no matter who we are, life – our life.

The dead live the death they were baptized into in Christ, filled with the hope of salvation. The living live in the hope against their unspoken doubts of eternal life.

Joy and sorrow mingle and do not cancel each other out. For sorrow and joy are both present in the living and the dead.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them.May they rest in peace. Amen.

[Ideas and passages from How to Run a Cemetery by Ann Thomas, Plough Quarterly, Autumn 2021.]