An excerpt from my work in progress

“How meaningful it is that the graves should be decorated with species that are late flowering; isn’t it fitting that these autumn flowers should be consecrated to the dead, who hand us cheerful flowers from their dark chambers in spring as the eternal witness to the continuation of life and to the eternal resurrection?” Clara by Friedrich Schelling

Throughout the decade or so before she died, my mother used to asked me to accompany her to the cemetery for the All Souls’ Day service each year in early November. An altar boy—lifting a cross high above his head—would lead the faithful in procession as we made our way through the myriad of graves sprawled across the rolling hills. Headstones of all sizes and shapes decorated with mums, daisies, cattails—every variety of late bloom. Fallen leaves cast autumn hues across the grass—among them relatives I had known well and some I had not known at all. A priest, vested in a black cassock, called loudly in prayer—beseeching God to have mercy—on those who trod on this hallowed ground—they who now lay beneath this consecrated earth.

“We pray for people who have died because it’s never too late,” my mother would remind me, “and ask them to pray for us—at least I do.” That was the summation of her belief in the ‘near-after’—a time when we lie in wait for the final judgment—not to be confused with the hereafter. The dead are here—some resting, others not—dependent upon their willingness—their desire—to let go. The spirits of those at peace—those resting in God’s grace—long to usher us into that dormition as well—to share in that blessed assurance—paradise. Perhaps they are the visitors we encounter as we lay dying.