The age old question: Why do you care about cemeteries? Why spend time in them?
I get asked this question a lot. Sometimes, I think it comes from discomfort. Cemeteries can remind us of our own impending deaths, after all. Sometimes, it makes people feel good to act as though this interest is macabre, or unnatural.
One of my goals in this project is to demystify the entire subject of historical cemeteries, and uncover the artistry, the history, and the beauty that can be found when we allow ourselves to stop and acknowledge the people who came before. The streets we walk on, the towns we live in, all of it was laid out and created by the people who lay resting in the cemeteries that many of us don't want to see. We are living in a world built by the dead, and that doesn't need to fill us with dread and fear.
I think that is my main take away so far in all of this researching and exploring that I have done to gather data for Where the Dead Lie. Why cemeteries? It isn't because they are resting places for the dead, or their physical human remains. It is because once, they lived and laughed and struggled in the same way that we do. I believe there is value in the acknowledgement of that truth.
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