About 30 years ago I had a significant dream of a cemetery through which I wandered with an amazing sense of peace and well-being. The sense of space and life lived deeply has remained with me although the only visual remnant from the dream is a memory of the entrance. I took this dream to be a presentiment of where I would one day be buried, although I did not know if the place actually existed.
About 8 years ago I moved to Upper Hutt from the coast. One day, as I drove into the forest ranges bounding this upper valley, I was startled to recognise the cemetery entrance of my dream.
Yesterday, All Souls Day, I entered this cemetery for the first time to keep vigil for an hour or so with all the bodies, which once breathed, occupied space, and moved among us, and now, motionless, fill a more localised earth-space.
All Souls Day—
silence lingers long after
the loss of words