by Teresa Slack
Let’s face it. Writers are weird.
We’re fascinated by things the rest of the world ignores, fears, dreads or
dismisses. Case in point: Cemeteries. Show me a writer who doesn’t love walking
through one reading the headstones and thinking of all the stories represented,
and I’ll show you an odd writer who probably hasn’t written in a while.
While other couples visit antique
shops and museums on vacation, my husband and I plan our route around nearby
cemeteries. One stone I will never forget from a cemetery in Winchester, KY was
an epitaph to a baby boy who had died in 1900 shortly before his first birthday.
It read: “How many dreams lie buried here?”
Doesn’t that sum it up?
I live next door to a cemetery.
Nearly every time a guest visits my house for the first time I get some
variation of the following question: “Aren’t you creeped out living so close to
a cemetery?” My husband always laughs and says, “At least the neighbors are
quiet.”
The writer in me couldn’t be
happier with the cracked, faded marble stones marching up the hillside where I
walk my dogs. It’s a small cemetery with stones beginning pre-Civil War to
present day. While the dogs sniff for deer and raccoon and chase skittering
leaves, I browse the stones and imagine what life was like for people I never
met.
How many dreams, secrets, lies,
fears, triumphs and stories are buried under each headstone? Tomorrow is
November 1st—the beginning of National Novel Writing Month for many writers
around the world. Do you need inspiration before you get started? I dare you to
visit a local cemetery on this chilly, windy Halloween. You’ll be amazed by the
stories waiting to be told. Are you brave enough to be the one to write
them?
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