time of repose

I came across something I had written a couple of years ago. It needed an edit but I thought it was worth posting.

Sunday. The pub was noisy and crowded. My football team was losing. I decided to bail out and find repose in the local Catholic church just around the corner. As I approached St. Bridget's I heard the unmistakable wail of the bagpipes and was confronted by a posse of well dressed people descending on the entrance to the church. A wedding had foiled my quiet time with God. I intended in going walkabout but the handsome sandstone building about one hundred yards along the road caught my eye. On further investigation it turned out to be St. John's Episcopalian Church. I had passed it several times, by car and foot. The church was closed but there was nothing stopping me from strolling around the well kept grounds. It was filled with gravestones. They were simple and modest in both scale and style, a far cry from the enormous gothic tombs of Glasgow's Necropolis. Flowers adorned a few of the gravestones - some fresh and colourful, others faded and withering, others as dead as those who lay beneath. I passed a gravestone which had several names on it. The last person had dies only two years ago. Someone close to her had recently laid a profusion of pretty flowers in her memory. As I continued my walk the white gravel crunched pleasantly under my feet. I reached the back of the church - somewhere beneath the grass and soil that edged down to the stone wall were the remains of paupers, people too poor to be given a decent burial. I was not sure if their grave extended out under the stone wall that surrounded the church grounds but I wanted to know. I wanted them to be given a decent burial. It might not make much of a difference to where their souls ended up but it just seemed like the right thing to do. A simple act of humanity and respect. But it would cost a lot of money and time and effort. Life goes one and money is spent on the living, although we erect monuments of great leaders, paint pictures of icons, wear T-shirts of Che Guvara. As I rounded the church's main front I let my eyes wander over the neat columns of gravestones, standing erect like a military parade on display. One gravestone stopped me in my tracks. The names and dates did not interest me. It was the four letters underneath. 'A kind and gentle man'. That would be a good way to be remembered. That would be a good way to be. In the end most of us will be forgotten. Achilles was a fool to think that his name would be made immortal by winning great battles. There are indeed names that will echo down through the ages but so what? In their eyes it gave their life meaning but it was a shallow victory. I left the church grounds with a sense of calm and perspective. I had got my quiet time with God after all.