Perhaps this is appropriate for Halloween, but instead I find it very sad. In my post the other day from when I chose to visit the municipal graveyard in Grenoble, I took this photo:

There was a plot against one of the exterior walls of the graveyard that had no marble headstones, but instead had metal nameplates scattered around on the ground:

Why were the nameplates scattered on the ground?

The likely answer is that they had lost their larger plot some time earlier, and had only recently been able to purchase another “freed space” that some other family had lost through neglect or whatever reason.

So, they spread on the ground the nameplates coming from the former plot in memorial to those who had passed long ago but who were not entirely forgotten, even if the actual remains were no longer present.

An effort to recognize those who had come before, yet sad none the less.

One thing I did not write about of my visit to the graveyard, it is large enough so that on can be in the center of it and not hear the noises of the city surrounding it.

A refreshing silence, but also a melancholy one.

I have a few photos of the graveyard taken from the height of the Bastille that ruled over the city for so long showing the expanse of the land of the dead.

Often, far too often, we forget the familiar yet - perhaps unconsciously but also deliberately - repressed refrain, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” the ultimate fate of us all.

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