Of Boneyards and Cemeteries

Elephant migration patterns have been studied by animal researchers for many years now, and one interesting finding is that the migrations often take a herd past the remains of elephants who died in years past. The encounter of the living elephants with the bones or carcass of dead elephants is a poignant one, full of mourning-like behaviors: touching the remains; picking up bones and seeming to caress them; ritual-like circling around the site, faces outward, as though to shield them from outsiders. Even secreting a tears-like liquid from glands around their eyes has been observed, as though they were crying. . .

Humans also have rituals associated with death. Typically (though not always), like the ancient Egyptians, we practice embalming and burial of the dead, in above-ground tombs or in the ground. That does not stop us from also returning to the site later to place flowers or to bring offerings/gifts of some sort or other, just as two or three or four of Jesus’s women followers did early on the morning of the First Easter (accounts differ on their numbers and who the tomb visitors were exactly, but Mary Magdalene is named in all four of the Gospels).

These women followers of Jesus had traveled with him on the journey to Jerusalem from Galilee, and had been present both at the crucifixion and when the body was placed in the tomb after Jesus’s death. They had procured spices beforehand to anoint the body, and as soon as the Sabbath Day was past, they headed for the tomb early the next morning.

The women, curiously, didn’t appear to be concerned about how they’d manage to get the stone rolled back so they could access the body: they were most likely preoccupied with thoughts of anointing the body of Jesus and mourning the loss of this dearly-beloved teacher and friend.

Many of us, too, after the death of a close loved one, return over and over again to the place a loved one died and/or to the burial place, and although we can’t touch the body or pour spices over it, we often talk to the deceased person as though he or she were still right there with us. It’s comforting to do so, and probably healing somehow, or otherwise we wouldn’t do it.

At other times, too, we visit cemeteries: I recall one late afternoon in spring, after a friend and I had been to a Festival Hill 3 p.m. music concert with my parents, that the four of us drove to the Hill Cemetery north of Round Top, where Dad’s maternal grandparents were buried, and we had a wonderful picnic there under the shade trees, in that gorgeously peaceful spot. It was just blissful to roll down the car windows, sip on sparkling wine from paper cups, and snack on cheeses, crackers, sandwiches, and fruit we had packed up beforehand. We didn’t pour out any libations on the graves, but perhaps we should have.

In these days of Easter Season of the church year (before Pentecost), it’s good for all of us to note that he we won’t need cemeteries any more after the Second Coming of Jesus. What then will the graveyards look like? Will the headstones be turned upside down after the Great Resurrection? Will all the silk and plastic flowers be raked away and replaced by a meadow of fabulous wildflowers or a field of dancing daffodils or a wild blanket of every color of tulips?

My guess is that none of that will matter, because by then we’ll all be celebrating the greatest Family Reunion of all eternity: all God’s Children of every time and place will be fully restored to life and joyously feasting with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Happy Easter Season, Dear Readers: Christ is risen; he is risen indeed.