9.15.20

Surrounded by Stories

A year ago, on my drive to the White Hart Inn for a writing retreat I very desperately needed, I stopped at this beautiful white church in Sharon, CT, and walked among the headstones in the quiet cemetery behind it in tears. I don’t know why I stopped. I don’t understand completely why I was crying. I imagine it had something to do with my lifelong conversation with the Divine about the meaning of life and the inevitability of death. I was approaching a milestone birthday. My littlest wasn’t a baby anymore. I’m sure I hadn’t gotten enough sleep. I felt, probably, alone. But as I walked among these headstones, I felt distinctly that I was not, in fact, alone. I felt the presence of the Divine, yes. But I also felt, palpably, the communion of saints. Not the venerated ones that have Wikipedia pages. But the ordinary souls whose bodies were buried beneath me. I was surrounded by stories that afternoon; stories I will never know of lives that were inherently beautiful, most definitely complicated, and poignantly finite, like all of ours are. The humid fall air felt thick with the human condition that day, and it made me feel held on all sides by strangers who surely asked the same questions about life and death that I was. Lately there has been so much division, so much us vs them, and I can’t help but think that maybe we’d all behave a little better if we walked around a cemetery every afternoon and remembered how all-in-this-together we actually are.