A Solemn Pleasure by Melissa Pritchard

Author:Melissa Pritchard [Pritchard, Melissa; Johnston, Bret Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781934137970
Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press

Guy Justly

The dearly loved child

Of Colonel Oliver and Mary Nicholls

At Rosebank, Rosslyn

26th February, 1850

Aged 7 months

“Of such is the kingdom of heaven”

Certain names catch at us. Christina Grieve. Tibbie Porteous. Fanny Law. Euphemia Todd. Proudfoot. Or an advertisement at the bottom of one monument: Gibb Bro’s. Roslin Granite Works, Aberdeen. It isn’t fair. We pause, our imaginations held, by the special tragedy of young deaths, or the mixed triumph of old deaths (the oldest of both cemeteries, a woman, aged 102 years), or by the waste of the young in wars, or by parents left to grieve a child, or by the young husband left to grieve his wife, by the young killed in accidents, by disease, drowned. Less dramatic births and deaths, those whose dramas are recessed, we pass by. The sheer numbers of the dead render us frugal, we portion out sympathies.

Here Lye

Anne Watson spouse of

John Sturrock merchant

In Edinburgh, Who died

The 17the of May 1782

Aged forty years

Underneath this stone Doth as . . .

Could . . . which . . .

Alive did vigor . . .

To . . . beauty as could . . .

What is it that draws us to linger over half-ruined inscriptions, puzzling out dates, to the romance of old cemeteries, stones sunk, overtipped, inscriptions blurred to unreadability, moss, scabs of lichen and rotting leaves overtaking the imperturbability of marble, the endurability of granite? One gravestone, fallen to the ground, is so covered over by an inch or more of grass and buttercup, a thick green hide, it could be mown. Near it, an angel of marble, once celestially white, soaring upward, now gray and black, tipping sideway and hidden beneath an overgrowth of hawthorn, a Cadbury biscuit wrapper, obscenely prosaic, by its base. All this is homily in stone, all this, what we are coming to ourselves, those of us who stroll with solemn pleasure among the dead, finding poetry in the biblical or sentimental or stark inscriptions on the stones, yet glad, too, to end our reverie, close the iron gate, and walk the graveled hill back up to the chapel or inn or tea shop, glad to turn our thoughts from a sweet melancholic ramble to our appetites, our calendars, our health, our families and friends, the petrol level in the car, the need for a drink or to take a child, or ourselves, to the bathroom. We need to pee, or to kiss and hold hands, or to help Grandmother into the car, for we are, with thrilling vengeance, alive.

This Passive Place a Summer’s nimble mansion,

Where Bloom and Bees

Exists an Oriental Circuit,

Then cease like these—

—Emily Dickinson

Last Sunday, walking along the river path to Rosslyn, I came upon an injured magpie. It had tucked itself into some leaves by the side of the path, and as the sun broke over the soft, green maple leaves, and with the rush of the river nearby, it seemed a not ungentle place to die. The earth is made of the dust of creatures who lived before.

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