mors janua vitæ

Here's some of the rest of the cemetery pictures from last Monday. It isn't the first time when I say I love cemeteries and graveyards. There's just something eerily beautiful about them, and the older the cemetery, the better. I think previously people put more thought into death, and therefore also the gravestones &c. The words used to be more thoughtful, sweeter and more personal, and that's why it's so interesting to visit all the graves and see what's written on the stones and what kind of graves people have gotten. I like all the simplest crosses, the elaborate and pompous headstones, statues, and the kind of graves that almost look like beds and bring to mind the grave being an actual resting place (like the one in the 10th picture).

Some headstones are really creepy, though. When there's only skulls and skeletons besides someone's grave, it makes you think what kind of a person they were. A creeper, a scientist or simply someone who liked bones? And the lady in the last picture made me feel a bit uncomfortable as well. (Have you read Conrad's Heart of Darkness? In the book there's the two women knitting in the waiting room and they are like escorts to the other room/death. This lady made me think of those sinister wee ladies, and I don't understand the door. Is it someone welcoming you to death or someone entering the doors of death? In any case, it's creepy.) But all the creepiness sort of makes the cemeteries even more beautiful.

//EDIT I did some investigating, and found this. The lady is Ethel Preston, died in 1911, standing in front of the entrance to her previous home. And the door is open, so that once they can be reunited with her husband, the door will finally be closed. However, he married their young housekeeper shortly after Ethel's death. Ah, I love learning about other people's lives!