Bonaventure Cemetery: Daylight in the Garden

I like that Bonaventure's angels are palpably sad, not blankly insipid. I almost expected to hear this one snuffle. 

Savannah's Bonaventure Cemetery really is a stunning place. The older parts of the cemetery held the kind of scenes that made me just stop and stare for awhile. There was something about it, though, that I wasn't prepared for. Most of that fell into the realm of the spiritual. It felt to me like an unsettled place, a place not so much of peace but of activity. It's hard to put my finger on it. It was so crowded, graves on top of graves, and I guess I'd expected it all to be very old. But there are new stones wedged in amongst the old kind of willy-nilly. Many of the new stones are, for lack of a better word, tacky, not in keeping with the graceful statuary and timeless themes of urn and dove, angel and olive branch. 

There was quite a bit of aesthetic tension.

Everywhere were tributes, big and small. Does everyone who passes Becky leave a pebble? 

An azalea peeks out from under a cast iron fence, trying out a couple of ill-timed blossoms..  I saw so many azaleas in Savannah. None in bloom yet. But I could imagine what the place must look like in April. Zow. Blasts of color everywhere. I'd like to see that. I don't know. Maybe they bloom in March that far south.

I loved gazing up into the faces of the angels. There weren't as many angels as I'd expected. Maybe I never found Angel Central. When I went into shops and galleries in town, though, I saw all the same angels I'd photographed on the cards and prints. 

They'd become old friends if I came here a lot.

Maybe I need an angel on my grave when the time comes.

 Or the world's largest bluebird. 

The Spanish moss in Bonaventure is so well-developed and huge and drapey (it must like being on a bluff by the river) that it became downright overwhelming for me. Maybe creepy. Something about the way it was blowing in the uncertain southwest wind, the constant motion and sighing of the breeze through the endless drapery, made me feel surrounded. There was so much motion all around me I felt as though I were constantly being crept up on. I kept catching waving gray drapery in the corner of my eye and whipping my head around to see what it was. I guess I'd have to get used to that if I lived in Savannah.

A cycad, coming into fruit. This ancient gymnosperm dates back to the Age of Dinosaurs. A bit palmy, a bit piney, a bit bromeliady. It reminded me of Audrey, the man-eating plant in Little Shop of Horrors. Feed me!  (Thanks, Jennifer Hurst!)

Not an angel, but a mourning woman. Or perhaps Corinne herself. Whoever she is, she's very beautiful.

I mentioned activity. There was nobody around, yet here was a perfectly fresh, just-plucked camellia bud in her broken hands. Someone has snapped off her fingers, which makes me very sad, and yet she's so beautiful, broken, like Venus with her busted arms. 

Who put the camellia there? 

Time to head toward town and food, the company of the living. I was glad I'd come to Bonaventure, but it was one of the many times on the trip I wished I'd had a friend to share it with. Maybe I'd have handled the haints a little better with company.