Romancing the stones

A number of overlapping viewings meant that younger daughter and I had to be out of the house for two hours at midday -- which beats the not unusual three-hour or five-hour banishments, which include the Accent Snob, who, for obvious reasons, can't be left in the house while critical strangers tramp through it.

My neighbour had told me that, despite my impressions to the contrary, you can take dogs to Beechwood Cemetery, so off we went on a glorious early autumn day. The colours were late, after a rainy (indeed,floody) spring and summer and unseasonably hot September.

We entered the cemetery by Poets' Hill, and I noticed how many of the formerly blank book-shaped markers that curve rather preciously at the crest, now have names and dates on them. As we moved into the older part of the grounds, younger daughter began reading the stones, one by one, so I held back the Accent Snob to allow her to approach.

A lady who had been sitting in her car asked us if we had family in this stretch of hill. Her husband was buried here a year and a half ago, and she remembered he regretted not having a grave for his father, so he could visit. She decided to make sure he had a marker for her to visit. She lived far away on the edge of Greater Ottawa, and didn't get in often to tend to his flowers.

I told her about Archibald Lampman's sonnet and about Tommy Douglas' gazebo at the western end of the cemetery, looking toward Parliament Hill. She had heard of neither the sonnet nor the gazebo.

We slowly made our way back. I began to fear that younger daughter would feel compelled to read all of the thousands of monuments. I stood by with the anxious Accent Snob, and thought of my Friend With Whom I Had Coffee, whose mother had died that morning. And I thought of visiting graves. The Resident Fan Boy's parents have graves we can visit; my grandmother doesn't, and I doubt Demeter will.

This doesn't trouble me. There are many places that remind me of my mother and grandmother. None of them are in Hades.

Failing to peak at the cemetery

When the Resident Fan Boy and I took the Accent Snob for his first walk of the day early Saturday morning, the sun was reflecting brightly off the trees and we saw several of our neighbours packing the backs of their SUVs and/or hatchbacks. It was then we knew the autumn colours were peaking. Demeter has a friend in Victoria who would wait for the annual phone-call of her brother in Hades, telling her to book the earliest flight for that fleeting moment when the leaves reach their highest dazzle.

That moment wasn't last Wednesday, but it was the only time I had available to take the twenty-minute walk from our front door to Beechwood Cemetery. I took a few dozen photographs to compare my trusty Nikon with the camera in my iPhone. Here are a few of them:

My first truly successful panorama shot taken with my phone. Click to enlarge.

The Slater family - and some neighbours (digital SLR)

Taken with my phone

Taken with my single lens reflex. All of these can be enlarged by clicking on them.

A final phone shot before heading home. 

You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone

In October 2007, I took the twenty-minute stroll from my house to Beechwood Cemetery and, facing west from the Tommy Douglas monument, took this snap:

2007

Not quite nine years later, I went to the same spot:

2016

The trees that have flourished in the past decade just about hide the luxury condo that was completed about a year ago, whose tenants now enjoy the view of Parliament Hill that used to be available from the cemetery.

You can click on the photos to enlarge them. If you want.

Dressed in morning

Every October I feel the pull to go to graveyards and catch wishes.

It's not as ghoulish as it sounds.

I read in a children's book some years ago that if you catch a falling leaf before it hits the ground; you can make a wish on it.

Leaf-catching is a rather strange thing to be caught doing, particularly if one is a grown woman.

Not having a car, I can walk to Beechwood Cemetery in about twenty minutes. This year, I was determined to go early in the morning, as nearly all of my past expeditions have been in the afternoon or at sunset. I set out on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving Monday, taking advantage of the fact that younger daughter has had a lift to school these mornings.

Beechwood Cemetery was not altogether deserted, even before 9 am. The groundskeepers were roaring about in their lawn mowers, vans, and earth movers. An occasional coffee-clutcher made his or her way en route to school or work. Down near the chapel, people were parking their SUVs. A long-limbed lady in black picked her way through the markers.

However, most of the time, I was on my own, snapping pictures, trying to capture the barely-used morning light. Every now and then, I would glimpse a golden shower not far away and plant myself beneath it. You really have to spot a leaf while it's still very high in the air and swoop with it. That morning, I caught seven. That's a record for one autumn, let alone one morning! I made seven wishes, three of them for younger daughter. (Judging from the events of the past week, the wishes are either coming true in a way I don't yet understand, or were poorly phrased.)

As I made my way back, I saw a man engraving a headstone, apparently sand-blasting through a plastic stencil. Wearing a hood rather like an old-fashioned hairdryer completely over his head, he crouched like Gollum on the edge of Middle Earth, surrounded by tombstones in the shape of open books, all blank, all waiting for sad stories in the drifting cloud of mist and dust.