Life and Death

On Monday, June 8 Jana and I took a tour with the American Wives Club to the cemetery at Novodevichy Convent in Moscow. I heard that the tour was good, but I didn't expect to be as touched by it as I was. I know that cemeteries are good places for learning history; I've been to many and I have always appreciated the value of the history and memories housed there. However, this one at Novodevichy was peaceful, and by that I mean literally full of peace. It washed over me for the duration of the tour.

To understand why you need to know that the cemetery is very crowded and all the graves are beautiful with monuments and especially decorated with flowers. Many of the graves we passed had fresh arrangements of flowers on them, and not just one -- several big colorful ones! I learned that it is the responsibility of the family to keep up the grave sites. Sure you can have someone do it for the right price, but that is not the tradition. I know that we do this to some extent in the US, but not to the extent I witnessed, and will hopefully be evident from the pictures. In this post you will see two pictures of people tending grave sites with such caring tenderness. The cemetery was not about death. It was about love, life, and remembering beloved family. It was comforting -- almost as if these loved ones were not gone. They are still cared for and waited on by those who miss them most.



June 8 also happened to be Scott's birthday and this first day Scott went to work on his fossils. This means that it was also the day Scott met Erik Trinkaus -- a famous and highly respected biological anthropologist. I was able to keep my tradition of making Scott a cheesecake for his birthday. Jana had some candles, so we sang happy birthday. We didn't have 29 candles, or a number 2 and a 9 to put together, so I just put two candles on one side and nine on the other. As usual I worried about how it would turn out, but it tastes great. Between the cheesecake and meeting Eric Trinkaus, Scott had a good birthday, and I was grateful to get to celebrate it with him! So ended a beautiful day of life and death.