Fall in the Cemetery
If you ask people which season of the year is their favorite I would bet on Spring or Fall being the top 2, by far. I love Spring, but I dread Fall. New Jersey winters can be savage and running a cemetery during the winter can be brutal. Fall means Winter is right around the corner, so I loathe Fall!
Besides ushering in the inevitable cold, snow, and ice there are 3 other reasons I despise Fall. First is LEAVES. Did I mention that I run a cemetery with 1,000s of deciduous trees that, although beautiful when green and when displaying their dying kaleidoscope of magical colors in the Fall, they fall. And we have to get rid of them. It’s an eternal task that we struggle with every Fall to assure that they are all gone before the first snow. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose, but we always give it our best.
One good thing about a hearty tree is that although it sheds its leaves once per year, it still lives to see another Spring. Annual plants can’t survive the winter and in Fall die. It seems ironic that I lament death in a cemetery, but regardless of the type of life, death, although eventually certain, sucks. The beautiful and colorful annual blooms that we plant every spring and bring us so much joy never make it through the winter. Even the trees, bushes, and hearty plants lose their color and go dormant. Maybe that is why humans sometimes feel the need to hibernate (or just take more naps!) when it gets colder; we are fighting off a long sloughed off but ever present evolutionary pattern still present in many life-forms.
The third reason Fall falls short for me is less daylight. We turn our clocks back on the first Sunday in November ending daylight savings time and it gets dark far to early for me. Driving home from work in the dark makes me feel like I stayed hours late and brings feelings of fatigue with it. Light brings energy, and I find I have far less of that in the Fall. Our cemetery is open for visitation during daylight hours, so Fall and Standard Time means fewer visitors and less time to enjoy the grounds. Many know that cemeteries are not just for the deceased and their loved ones. They are a place of light, peace, solitude, nature, contemplation, and much more for the living. We need as much of these things as we can get!
The thing is that a longer Fall could mean a shorter Winter, and that isn’t a bad thing, is it? The light of Spring and renewal of life will be here soon, and in the meantime we can rest assured that the cycle of life keeps spinning.