Today was chilly, gray and rainy. As I drove out of the village to run a few errands, I stopped to let a couple of men in black suits cross the street. I knew where they were headed. I knew why they were headed there.
In our village is a lovely cemetery. It is not at all like other cemeteries I have seen, either with the rows of mixed granite headstones and crosses remembering loved ones of any town USA, or the rows of white crosses marking those who gave the last full measure of devotion for their country here on European soil. It is typically German, with each plot a small, detailed, meticulously tended garden. They each are bordered in granite edging, like a well-heeled front yard planting bed. They each have small, carefully cared-for, planted flowers or bonsai surrounded by mulch or smooth gravel. They each have a small box or lantern with a candle. At the front is a beautiful, small chapel with a glass front wall, soaring ceiling and stained-glass windows. And outside the walls, you'll find a water pump, watering cans, a wheelbarrow, buckets and a couple of spades, though you often see people walking in with their own watering cans.
So, in the rain, in the late-August chill, these men were going to a funeral service.
It always strikes me that these mourners, these respect-payers, do not typically arrive by car. You see them, ones and twos, walking from their home in the village. They are old men, old women, who are here to see off a friend, a neighbor, a companion they may have known for decades and decades and decades.
And I am halted by the thought that they have grown here together, raised families together, gone to the same village church together, gone to the same market together, gone through each others struggles and joys together. Maybe they ran together as children. Maybe they kissed and made promises in this very village as teenagers. Maybe they saw each other off to war from that train station that is now a theater. Maybe they have seen their country go through triumph and tragedy, hubris and humiliation, together. They know each others secrets, secrets I couldn't begin to understand or comprehend, being who I am and where I am from.
And slowly, all those people who know your secrets, who have tasted your joys and sadness in a way no one else can understand, are passing away. And your history with them. The circle of people who are witness to the fullness of your experience is getting smaller. I am struck, not by the fear of getting old, of getting weak, of getting closer to going Home. I am stopped cold by a feeling of being the one left, that person whose shared story is no longer shared. As if it didn't happen. All that incredible richness, not shared anymore.
The only thought that brings me back is the idea that now all those mourners will have coffee and cake and remember. They will remember their friend. They will tell stories of his life, of their childhood, their youth before the war, their complex, shared experiences in a time of war, their adult lives ...
It's much easier to be the one remembered than to be the one who doesn't have anyone to remember with anymore.
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