There Is Beauty in Death Like I’ve Never Seen It Before

August 8, 2022

11:03 P.M.

Writing to my journal in my room in Bermondsey, upon my return from an afternoon spent in High Gate Cemetery in northern London. A blend of photographs from that day, as well as a previous one in Bath Abbey Cemetery, fuse together and adorn the page.

Life is flowing in through my window. I want it to, it feels nice. But I think it would, even if I screamed, shouted or even told the wind to fuck off.

If I wanted to I could close the window, sparing myself the confrontation. Hours, months, centuries could pass, and this room could remain ‘lifeless,’ untouched and safe from the natural cycle of life happening just outside.

But, time would demand an intervention, and the room would have to succumb to the inevitable parts of life. Air would flow through, suffocating all lifeless feeling and pushing all denial out. For this natural world is a forceful, unforgiving, yet beautiful phenomenon.

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Graves worth many families’ riches, from years dating back to the 1800’s, once polished and carved, carefully placed and prayed upon, must have played that same game with life.

For in the year 2022, as a girl beaming with youthfulness and rich curiosity walked along the meandering, serpentine paths through these very graves, she quickly noted the trees growing between families’ headstones and their roots lifting once cared-for and polished monuments up, making way for life to pass through.

Some had cracks and smears from the winds and messages of love fading between angels’ fingertips and stinging nettles scattered like guards around the outskirts of graves.

Although far from the intended place of rest for ever-loved mothers, sisters, husbands, painters and thinkers, they lay nestled with life.

For the tree roots climbing up the sides, deep greens of ivy and ferns scattered about, rusting letters filled with dirt and the grime of centuries passed, all bleed the beauty of the natural cycles of life.

The rustling of trees from above, the chirping of buds and the crackling of sticks on the uneven paths.

The faint sounds of bell chimes from the church down the road and the yellow beady eyes of a black cat just emerging from the shadowy graves nearby.

This hour of my journey was beaming with life: the young, the old, the spreading and decaying, the alive and the deceased.

Mourning families could have awoken day after day to keep their sleeping loved ones in a clean, tidy space. They could have closed the window on the outside world, could have screamed, shouted, cried fuck off or paid loads of money– which they certainly did.

But what is so beautiful and ironic, now 2000+ years later, is that no matter the extent of human effort, nature is always in control. And one must succumb to these inevitable truths of life, and then of death, of clean headstones to uprooted, ivy-ridden, dust-smeared, cracked and faded graves.

For life, will eventually run its course…

But, one can always find solace in knowing that the absolute surrender to time will lead them through a fulfilled life and to a quiet, ever-so lovely place to lay down one last time, like High Gate Cemetery.