Perspectives....................

My perspective has changed since Alexandra died. When I visit her grave I find that I now feel I have roots here. I have never felt that before. I always felt England was home and always would be. As a child I would go with Auntie Annie and tend family graves. People I never met nor even heard of mostly, but all with our family names. When mum and dad died they were laid to rest in that same cemetary, well the new part of it anyway. When I looked around I saw neighbours and relatives graves. Mum and dad lay across from Mr Mole who lived across the road from us on Bidwell Hill. It all seemed so right somehow. Thats where I wanted to be.
I always loved the old cemetary. The grave stones lay at all angles as ground had shifted. Ivy grew up many of them and it was overgrown and comfortable. The birds nested in the big trees and many graves were hidden now from long neglect. Still it was peaceful and I liked to be there. When I went back many years later the stones were all lined up along a wall.
Someone had tidied up. It made it easy for me to take some pictures of my relations stones for my geneology project.
The new cemetary across the lane was an open field and didnt feel quite the same but still it was where everyone I knew was laid to rest back then. Where I expected to be. I had told my cousin Mark that I wanted to be there and would be cremated and sent to him. Trouble is I am sure he would have left me in his garage for years and years before he found the time to get up to Bedfordshire to do the deed.
So it was, when Alex died and I saw her grave I started to feel that now I was more at home here than I have ever been. By Alexandra lies my Mother in law, my sister in law. My brother in laws baby and other relations on my husbands side. People I know. I am if not "home" here now, I feel the beginnings of a tie to this place with Alex being here. No one should have to bury their granddaughter, but in doing so I now feel more of a desire to remain here. Maybe now I can be at peace?



If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.

~ Rupert Brooke









Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am in a thousand winds that blow,
I am the softly falling snow.
I am the gentle showers of rain,
I am the fields of ripening grain.
I am in the morning hush,
I am in the graceful rush
Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
I am the starshine of the night.
I am in the flowers that bloom,
I am in a quiet room.
I am in the birds that sing,
I am in each lovely thing.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there. I did not die.



~ Mary Elizabeth Frye