When I was a small child, my grandfather was my favourite companion, and it was he who introduced me to graveyards taking me to see his sister in a country churchyard in Cheshire. She had died in childhood and cut into the worn sandstone slab which marked her grave a bunch of eight different flowers represented her parents and their six children, with one of the stems severed. I was enthralled and have been a dedicated visitor of cemeteries ever since, drawn by the symbols of inverted torches and shrouded urns and by the statues whether they be angels of striking beauty or figures missing limbs and choked by ivy. I cherish the inscriptions variously poignant, sentimental, witty, poetic, pompous and self-aggrandising. Different stones bear chirpy doggerel, carry dire warnings, make optimistic predictions of a future life, are bitter and point scoring carrying their grudges to the grave, yet others attribute the most unlikely virtues to the deceased. Simple and ornate, decorous and incongruous, they all have a story to share…
Come with me into the graveyard, all human life is here
Gravedigger
