On Mortality

The weather here today is perfect. The sun was high and warm by the time I woke up this morning, so I went for a walk.

I pulled on my hiking boots and picked a direction on the map. The other day (per Zach's suggestion) I walked North along the coast, skirting the old golf course and ending at the Firth of Tay. I decided to walk away from the coast this time and chose a road that angled its way out of town towards the southwest. I walked through town, past the cathedral ruins, and was out into farm land sooner than I had anticipated. The hills were fat and soft, like a sleeping animal. The scattered farms looked prosperous and the meadows climbed high up the rolling hillsides, giving the valleys an alpine air. I was the only person on the road except for a few sheep, and it stayed that way for over an hour. I crested a ridge overlooking an expanse of hazy foothills and saw a sign for the nearby town of Prior Muir and decided to check it out.

I walked past the Prior Muir Inn -- white stucco, blue shutters, no sign of life -- and wandered up a hill, past a white Anglican church and pleasant, dozing houses. At the crest of the hill stood a broad commons, with an obelisk and flagpole, and beside it an old cemetery. A series of pale green and brown hills rolled away to the horizon, like the swells of the sea. Below me the church bell tolled the hour, but otherwise there was not a sound. This was as perfect a spot as I had ever seen.

I had a look at the obelisk. COMMEMORATING PRIOR MUIR SOLDIERS, it said, and had names carved in it, good Scottish names like Rowan MacCrary, Stewart MacDonnald, and Horace MacHaggis. There were almost fifty names in all, too high a number surely for such a small village in Fife. But then the cemetery beside the commons also looked far too big for the size of the village. It covered the hillside and the dozens of ornate monuments suggested that this had once been a place of wealth.

I went through the gate and walked slowly around. One particularly beautiful stone caught my eye, an octagonal marble column surmounted by a granite sphere. The column logged the copious deaths of MacCleods and their near relatives for the last two hundred years. A small square on the back said:

Douglas H. died July 24 1852 AE. 4 Y's 1 M'o
Joshua F. died July 31 1852 AE. 1 YR 11 M's.
Children of J. & C. MacCleod.

What could it have been, I wondered, that carried off these two little brothers just a week apart? A fever? It seemed unlikely in July. An accident in which one died and the other lingered? Two unrelated events? I pictured the parents crouched at Joshua F's bedside, watching his life ebb, praying to God not to take him as well, and having their hopes crushed. Isn't life crappy? Everywhere I looked there was disappointment and heartbreak recorded in the stones: "Joseph, son of Ephraim and Sarah MacDonald, died March 18 1846, aged 18 Yrs," etc. So many were so young. I became infected with an inexpressible melancholy as I wandered along among these hundreds of stilled souls, the emptied lives, the row upon row of ended dreams. Such a sad place! I stood there in the mild September sunshine, feeling so sorry for all these luckless people and their lost lives, reflecting bleakly on mortality and on my own dear, cherished family so far away in America, and I thought, 'Well, screw this,' and walked back down the hill to St. Andrews.