I’m sad to see gravestones in Swedish cemeteries being taken down and removed, for lack of someone to care for them, or perhaps more correctly, pay for someone else to care for them. And I get it. I guess. Someone has to pay the price for it, and all that.

But still. Having spent a few precious minutes of peace and quiet at the wonderful graveyard of St Kenelm’s church in Enstone outside Oxford, I still mourn the fact that Swedish cemeteries are such images of straight lines, well kept graves, and neatly tended shrubs and hedges.

Because the magic get’s lost somewhere along the way. I love burial grounds, and perhaps that’s an oddity in itself (although luckily I know I have several friends who join me in this oddity. I am not alone!), but the real magic of a cemetery is never as well experienced as in a gloriously unkept cemetery found in such number on the British Isles (including Ireland).Lush greenery, old gravestones, where the writing is all but impossible to read, tipped over gravestones, broken ones, in all manner of disarray. Hundreds of years old graves with a fresh bouquet of flowers and a burning candle on it. Some clearly forgotten. Birds chirping away, the dapples of the sun through the branches of a tree, insects buzzing, a dog barking in the distance.Experiencing such peace and calmness, my soul settling down into the bosom of my heart, taking it in, all of it. I sense love in the air at cemeteries. Perhaps that seems strange, but then again, grief is love with a twist of sadness to it, right? Looking at myself, I cry for those I’ve lost in this world, because I love them and miss having them around in the form I’ve grown used to. Walking around on a cemetery I feel closer to those who are no longer here physically. Memories of times gone by sweep through me, of laughter, conversations, smells and sounds of my childhood tickle my senses, making me believe, for a split second, that I am sitting at the kitchen table of my Momo, drinking a glass of her homemade pink saft…

Oh sweet memories.

I am grateful for having lived a life which has created a grand library of sweet memories to ruminate upon.