For a time of All Saints' Day, it's rather successful; At the beginning of November 2024, the sun sends the sad days of the end of summer far away. The cemetery has taken on its most attractive adornment, all made up of the bright colors of chrysanthemums.
Whether we are afraid or curious, it is true that the cemetery always intrigues; strolling through its aisles, looking and remembering, looking for well-known names and wondering about those that are forgotten, stopping in front of photographs, all this can be a pleasant pastime. Evoking the past, the present… and the future among graves can be restful and soothing for the mind; if meditation only inspires sad ideas in us, let us move away and think of something else; for many, once a year is not a sign of consistency and, beyond the gate, life goes on.
A family and their servant in the neighboring compound
But the cemetery, in addition to the contemplation around family members or friends, often conceals many surprises for the curious; at the bend of a grave, we find a badge of the Legion of Honor awarded to a resistance fighter, on a vault we learn, through the preserved memory of a friend, that a baker and his wife, victims of an accident, are buried there car at the beginning of the 1920s, that a certain place devoid of any flower or insignia was the one where the sisters of the convent were buried, that it was at the beginning of the 19th century that the current cemetery was created, that a cross surely founded gives the date, that the large cross inaugurated at the Mission in January February 1949 had been offered by prisoners and deportees returning from the war, that the grave of a benefactor of the commune is dominated by three crosses (one for his wife, one for his daughter who died young and one for himself) and that not wanting to leave his servant aside he had offered her a concession adjoining theirs.
Memory, whether it generates meditation or whether it is fueled by curiosity, remains the best agent of transmission.
