Patrick Memorial Gardens, Gainesville, FL

These places are not just places of the dead.
Today, I visited another small cemetery. Located on SR 222 in Gainesville, FL, it is very easy to miss, leaving me driving past it then turning around and driving past it once again! It is decorated with the usual canopy of oaks and Spanish moss that still has the power to leave me standing in awe of it after living under it for 11 years. The grounds are somewhat young, having been established in 1920, and it is an active burial place. The light was just beautiful today.

As are many of the cemeteries here in the greater Gainesville vicinity, it is overgrown with little grounds-keeping, being primarily a typical, less-than-wealthy Southern graveyard. There are no intricate carvings, flowery scripts or extra words used here. There are rows and rows of flat cement burials. This is something I am still getting used to about Southern cemteries. In the Northeast, where I grew up, there are monuments and there is really long history. People spent money on those places! Many here have simply and sometimes roughly carved names and dates and nothing more. But, even though there is little care for the grounds and less than elaborate monuments, I cannot say there is little care for it's inhabitants. Almost everyone here had mementos. Flowers, teddy bears, angels and so much more. These people, even those that have been here a while, are in someone's thoughts.

I'm Sorry, Dead People.
There were many new burials, which I try to stay away from, out of respect. In getting to some of the older ones, I found myself saying secret apologies to the very recent that I had to maneuver around. It is just how I work in the cemeteries I visit - with respect and empathy. But, I have to admit that I was entranced by a few and did take photos.

Patrick Memorial Gardens provided me some great imagery, with its trees, fake flowers, cement slabs and mounds where burials have pushed upward, seemingly not made deep enough to stay under. One thing I have realized after visiting here, is that I am becoming increasingly interested in the mementos; the gifts of love and sorrow and memory that these places contain. They are touching. They are real. They come from real emotion that belongs to real people. These places are not just places of the dead.