What Does The State of A Cemetery Say?

Today, I went to a funeral and for the first time in Trinidad and Tobago, I went into a cemetery. I've been into cemeteries before, around the world. I've seen quite a few people become permanent fixtures in cemeteries before.

And yet today was a little different. I'd wondered for some time who is responsible for taking care of cemeteries in this country since they really aren't well maintained. Overgrowth of brush, tombstones and crosses so poorly maintained that sometimes it's hard to distinguish where things start and begin. Today, I ended up in a cemetery I won't name because if there are people in Trinidad and Tobago reading this, they should wonder if it's the cemetery near them. It may well be.

There wasn't much in the way of parking; parking along a roadway where large trucks navigate a slim road and where there is no sidewalk. There's grass at least 4 feet tall all around; an asphalt road that fades into the grass meets the road at the broken wall which hasn't seen paint for decades. Sun melted candles are lieing within a brick at the entrance.

For the funeral, someone had brushcut a path to a place up a hill, beyond where the asphalt transitioned into grass. An uphill slope of uneven ground, hidden by thick stalks of brush which remained and defied all but the bravest bare and sandaled feet; the elderly could not navigate to the burial site easily and so stayed in the shade of some short mango trees. As the coffin got there, one of the gravediggers drunkenly notified the group of family members that 'water had broken into the hole and it might collapse' which does not bode well for the water table, I suspect.

I stand there, thinking about these things on a hot and humid day while family members too distraught to do so dealt with their grief. And I wonder - I honestly wonder - how long it will take for this site to be overgrown with brush. I don't know that a stone will be placed, some form of marker, but I doubt that it will remain unmarked.

Who deals with these cemeteries? Who is supposed to be maintaining them? I don't know, but I do know that they aren't maintained. And what does that say about this country? Does how a society treats it's dead say anything about them?

Meanwhile, in other countries, I have seen pristine cemeteries, sometimes centuries old.

Am I an aberration to notice these things? To think that a cemetery should be maintained? I suppose I am, because whenever I see one in this country outside of Port of Spain, I see one which is held in disregard.

But I do not know what that means about the society which it exists within.