I love being in graveyards; touristing, camping (they are flat, not rocky, and quiet), just hanging out. One of my very favorite picnic spots is the "family plot" that has my paternal grandparents, their parents, and where I would put a marker for Dad if that agreed with mom's preferences, which it doesn't. My personal belief system doesn't include life after death, so I don't talk to them, but I like walking up and down and reading the headstones, especially in Europe. And I am very careful not to tread on them, out of respect. In Brittany you see graves with "bubons" all over them and positively swarming with little people, that represent the hundreds who died in the Plague years; there will be headstones in groups representing mom dad brother sister uncle aunt grandparents babies all of whom died within a few days of each other, and so on. It makes one realize how mortal humans are, which is kind of comforting to me. The "countless white crosses" one sees in Normandy are also impressive, standing in mute witness to man's blind indifference to his fellow man, as the poet said...

(rethinking) I said my personal belief system doesn't include life after death; that isn't quite accurate. Rather, I don't believe in souls, but I don't disbelieve ghosts. Our late father visited 2 of my sisters - vrey soon after dying, he came and sat on my oldest sister's couch. She could see through him and the couch didn't depress, but there he was, and she thought "this won't be so bad, if he comes to visit once in a while" - but he never came back to her. And several years later, another sister named a son after him, and one night soon, when my sister was up tending to an older child, he "walked" into the nursery and looked into the crib at his namesake. This frightened my sister badly and he quickly walked out. And he never appeared to me or to our fourth sister. I wish he would come visit me; THEN I would talk to him. But I find that I can't talk to him when he isn't there..