Today I sat on a bench by a pond. The sun shone in a cloudless sky (most unusually for Hamburg in April) yet the cool breeze made it bearable. The birds chirped a constant tune, quietly enough so it didn’t irritate, and the geese honked; loudly, but only a couple of times before they flew away. Trees, hedges and grass blended into a lush green watercolour-esque background, punctured by the occasional pops of yellow and purple flowers and the still water reflected it all back to me.
The bench was in the Friedhof Ohlsdorf, the largest cemetery in Europe and the fourth largest in the world. The flowers were those laid by headstones or planted on the graves, and I could hear the birds because of the hushed tones people tend to use around the dead. And I discovered, against all expectation, that a cemetery is the perfect place to spend Easter Saturday. Whether your cemetery is full of mossy crumbling gravestones around a village church, gothic Victorian marble mausoleums or neat rows of identical military graves, there are two good reasons other than peace and quiet to visit one on Easter weekend.
Cemeteries are a reminder of our own mortality. We use hushed tones out of respect for those mourning, but there is also something quietening about the realisation that death comes to everyone. In western cultures we are normally kept distanced from death; even in a global pandemic most of us knew death only as an ever-climbing number on our screens, only occasionally reminded that each of those numbers represented a person who was loved and who would be missed daily. Surrounded by names, birthdays, death dates and messages of love carved into headstones; we have to face that death is personal and that, on an unknown day, we too will pass away. At a time when the shops are filled with spring pastels and chocolate and bunnies, what a much-needed reminder that Easter weekend begins with death. The painful, naked death on a cross of a man who had brought life to so many others.
But there is so much more than death in a cemetery in spring. I saw flowers blooming and cherry blossom petals falling like gusts of snow, the terrapins clambered onto a log to sunbathe, and some plants that were probably asparagus spears (although they could have been the start of a completely different plant) were poking six inches out of the riverbank. I imagine some of the birdsong was probably about eggs and hatchlings and there were two adorably fluffy goslings following a mother goose across the grass. In the midst of death new life was everywhere. Even in the southern hemisphere where Easter arrives in the early autumn there are so many reminders of life being given and sustained, as the harvest is gathered and celebrated. It’s a reminder of the glorious resurrection, that the man who was God defeated death, not merely surviving it but reversing it and living again without death.
Easter begins on Good Friday with death and darkness but by the time the sun rises on Sunday morning we’re celebrating that new life has broken through. What could be a more appropriate way to spend the day in between then in a place where both the sadness of death and the joy of new life meet and mingle.
