October 11, 2010: Wintersleep - Weighty Ghost

Wintersleep - Weighty Ghost: youtube.com/watch?v=cAu1U-LscUk

There is something I've noticed about Toronto that makes me a little uncomfortable: There are no graveyards. None. There is no room for death in Toronto.

One thing I should state before I defend point is that most places I've lived have been fairly similar, especially in the geographic sense, save Toronto. Everywhere I've lived has had a body of water that separates one part of town from another part of town, and there seems to be some sort of rivalry between these two parts of town because of that specific geographic difference. I chose Toronto over any other city that I've longed to be a part of because there is no body of water that divides; it's all concrete together.

But most everywhere I've lived has also had prominent graveyards and everywhere. The town I grew up in had large and small graveyards near every church (of which there were also many). Halifax had beautiful, ancient graveyards with stones that dated over 200 years. To read their epitaphs was a humbling and reflective experience. I recall reading some, faded strong, that told the shortest stories of those dying young, those families buried together, spouses, even some for infants. I remember they were usually open, empty. And I recall walking through one in the town where I grew up, late at night, early into my twenties, and feeling like someone would come to make me leave; their emptiness made them feel exclusive or private.

A friend told me, when I was very young, that his greatest fear was to have to spend a night alone in a graveyard. I told him that that was where I would feel most comfortable. There would be no one there to harm, no one to threaten, and most are so terrified of death that they would stay away from it's sight. One could sleep undisturbed.

And Toronto has no graveyards. I found one, once, a large one fairly north of downtown. I had to take a subway to get there and there were advertisements at the gates (gates!) with prices for plots and services. It was disgusting. A price on death. Anyway, I walked through it and it was nice, well kept, but too much so. It wasn't so much a place of death as much as a place of business. This city is so full of life that come the concept of death and dying it gets everything so tragically wrong and I long for a graveyard to bike past as I go to work, a friends house, home, where the dead could remind me of my eventual death, to love and be loved.

I had to go to a service in that same graveyard in Toronto, once, for a friend. I've been blessed with so much love and life around me, it was so foreign to have to deal with a real death. I wasn't ready for it, and won't be.