A Birthday and A Cemetery

Well, the magical 38th birthday has come and gone. I feel no different than I did on Saturday except I've got a cold and I think I could sleep for weeks.

It was a most mellow of birthdays thanks to all the germs invading me and Hubster. I did manage to persuade The Princess and Mini-husband to head out on a ramble around the village which did me the world of good.

I let them decide which way we went, figuring that we had no time limit, no pressing destination, this was going to be a birthday wander, lead by two of my little angels.

So were did they want to go first? The village cemetery. One could look at that and find all kinds of things not to be excited about, especially on one's birthday, but I decided to ignore my inner-freaking out self, and go for it.

I must say, our cemetery is beautiful. The granite slabs gently sit on a small hill that is tucked into a hollow with a few large trees at one end. It's almost as if the cemetery is a little nest, cradling the past under it's branches. There are graves dating back to the late 1800s, marked with the same names as our neighbours and friends. Names I now know how to pronounce correctly, names that mark the different hamlets around the village. The village's history is there, resting quietly.

Mini-Husband and The Princess were fascinated by the mixing of names on the various tombs. A woman born with the name Labard but buried with her Calamy family. I explained to them how through marriage, the different families of the village all have connections and ties. Mini-Husband got excited about this and started talking about how if he married his girlfriend from school they could be buried together and then their kids could marry the kids of his other friends and be buried all together too. The joy in his eyes as he talked about his final resting place, crammed to the gills with all his buddies, made me want to smile.

We wandered a bit more through the cemetery and then finally decided it was time to say goodbye to the oldest residents of the village. On the way out, we stopped to say hello at the grave of someone we had known, just to check that her spot wasn't too covered with snow and that her pot of fake flowers were still standing.

And with that, we went looking for treasures.

The Princess found a half of a walnut shell, a leaf, and two stones to give me as birthday presents. The walnut shell for holding my earrings, the stones to hold down papers on a windy day, and the leaf just because I didn't have one already.

It was lovely spending time with just the two of them. And, I must admit, it was nice to have visited the cemetery. It reminded me that this life is worth living and I need to enjoy it while I've got it. There will be time enough for sleeping later on.