Nothing ghoulish or morbid in that - it was a pleasant place, full of trees, carefully maintained pathways and borders, and lovingly tended plots. Her generation had no fear of the dead, Thomas - they'd seen so much of it.
We'd walk among the statues and gravestones, looking at the dates, reading the names aloud, and we'd have our favourites. One in particular I remember: a cherub watching over the grave of a little boy, Rob Roy MacGregor, who died in 1899, just five years old.
I loved going to see him (of course I confused the boy with the cherub)..and don't recall feeling any sadness as we stood before the little statue. Children have a far greater acceptance of things, don't they? I never once thought about his parents Herbert and Georgina...and how it must have been for them, how they must have stood there too.
I went back to the grave a few years ago. It was all so very different.
Rob Roy's cherub had a missing hand, his wing had been broken off and his grave was full of weeds. Some of the statues nearby had been defaced and gravestones had been pulled down.
It felt faded, jaded, tired...it felt unloved and I wished I hadn't gone back there. Some things are, after all, best left behind....
I thought of my walks to see Rob Roy last week when we spent an hour or so in Laeken Cemetery, the oldest cemetery in Brussels. It was a book, 'Secret Brussels', that sent us there.
I love old cemeteries - they have a different kind of peace, a serenity, a semi-wildness where nature flourishes and wild things roam; a quietness, a sense of long-trodden pathways, of ancient lives.....where the past is not such a foreign country after all.
We were met by a cat, a yellow-eyed, chocolate-brown, stocky fellow who seemed to welcome our presence and he stayed in step with us as we explored, padding alongside us, curling round and around our ankles every time we stopped.
It was a dismal day. The sky was a wringing wet, grey dishcloth, and it was chilly too.....but somehow it suited.
We walked, stepping over puddles, avoiding the muddy bits, and we gaped - there is no other word for it - at the funerary art around us.
A woman, a desperate grief-ravaged young woman, draped in flowing robes, arms bare, hair gently coiled, lies across a family grave as if she has hurled herself on to it. One of her bare feet is on the step of the grave, the other almost touches the gravelled path.
She is startlingly lifelike, like one of those high-street performance artists who dust themselves in pewter-coloured powder to resemble a statue.
I wonder at first whether she is meant to resemble a member of this long-dead family, though I think it more likely she is a symbol of a family's grief, mourning for all eternity, on their behalf.
I have never seen anything like it before.
They are everywhere, these weeping angels. It is Dr Who without the horror.
One kneels at the foot of a grave, hands clasped before her. She gazes at the inscription on the gravestone and her bare feet, crossed behind her, are visible through the thin material of her robes.
Along from her is a third statue, her hair flowing free. A beautiful long leg exposed, she lies almost prostrate at the foot of a family grave. Someone has placed lilies in her arms.
Her goddess-like perfection, her grace, her ethereal beauty, are a stark contrast to the utterly ordinary faces in the black and white photographs on the gravestone she watches over.
We find a little boy and girl at one grave - the girl is sitting on the granite slab and her hand caresses the polished stone. Her feet are bare but the little boy (her brother?) standing over her, looking down to her, protectively, wears sturdy shoes and thick socks.
It is raining and drops collect, like clear, bright jewels, on his forehead and lips.
Not far from them, another statue - a woman standing fully upright leans against a tall, stone column bearing the bust of a proud-faced man. A hand covers her face. She is distraught. Does she represent the widow of this man, who gazes to the distance above her, oblivious to the grief around him?
And then, most poignantly, perhaps, we find the sprawled body of a young man, a soldier. He lies resting, exhausted. The grave is that of Max Pelgrims, aged 24 when he was killed on August 19, 1914, just weeks after the beginning of World War One.
And so we walk and walk and the cat follows us on soft paws, and the rain drips on us from the cedars and the yew trees, and blue tits and great tits go 'seep seep seep' in the conifers overhead..
We find ornate family crypts and altars, perfect dainty ceramic flowers and laurel wreaths, we find an original casting of Rodin's 'Thinker' and I vow to return because I need more time to absorb this place.
Before leaving we follow the instructions in our guide book to find the entrance to an underground crypt.
It is not a happy place. It is chilling in all senses of the word..and I find it difficult to imagine any family wishing this as their loved one's last resting place.
It is dank and gloomy and the odd vases of fresh flowers only serve to reinforce the grimness of the place.
One of the long galleries is gated off with a metal grill, but beyond it we see another gallery and another grill. Grainy, filtered daylight from dirty skylights only adds to the bleakness, and suddenly we are all very cold..
It could be a sci-fi setting, a cell, and it feels miserable, without hope and soulless..and it goes on and on. There are puddles on the floor and I hear a rustling and water dripping.
I know for a moment, though we never discuss it, we are all silently thinking with relief of your little place, high on a clifftop and of you flying free across land, sea and sky.
We walk back up the steps glad to emerge into the open, to the trees and the birds, and we head back to the cemetery gates with talk of cafe and coffee - leaving the weeping angels and their silent, anguished, eternal vigils, behind.
Laeken Cemetery: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laeken_Cemetery
Max Pelgrims: http://www.bel-memorial.org/photos/PELGRIMS_Max_2882.htm
Brighouse Cemetery: http://bit.ly/IRy31A
Rodin's 'Thinker': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thinker
Secret Brussels: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secret-Brussels-Jonglez-Guides/dp/2915807965/ref=sr_1_sc_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1336382334&sr=8-2-spell
Picture Gallery
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