It is that time leading up to All Saints and All Souls, which brings with it the customary cemetery visit to honor those passed before us. And like most people with enough freedom to do so (and with a desire to avoid crowds), we decide to go a few days in advance. Because while it will not exactly give us privacy, there’s at least a good chance that we won’t be crowded in, except when we’re on the bus, which – quite tellingly – is full of the elderly doing their duty by God and country. 

As an aside, my paternal grandparents died in Auschwitz and my mother never went to either of her parents’ funerals even though she would never miss an opportunity to tell everyone how close she had been to her father (who’d provided “the prettiest girl in the region with her own personal Cinderella/ rags to riches story” when he married her), but I never held that against her. People do mourn in different ways, as a friend pointed out to me when my own father passed, and while I knew it was true, it was exactly what I needed to hear at that particular point in time. 

Which also explained why I was watching old videos of someone near and dear at the family grave of the person I was with several days ago. Admittedly with the sound set to extremely low, so I could just hear it, after checking if there were any people around who would not necessarily understand, more so since the videos were in a completely different language. 

It made me think though, how in the conservative cocoon of this society (and by this I mean the people I am and was exposed to when in Poland) even mourning becomes something that you’re not allowed to do on your own terms, but instead to a set of rules and regulations that to the people ensuring they are kept might as well have been written on the proverbial two stone tablets.

No laughing at the graves and certainly no videos or any other similar sins (like setting off fireworks in a safe environment, as a friend did in another country to honor her father, who loved them above all else). But hiking up prices for candles sold by the gate is ok, as is stealing those very same candles along with the candleholders right off the graves is ok. We know this because we were told before going to mark ours, so they could not be resold.

I know that not everyone’s the same, and hypocrisy can run rampant in any society that does not value open and honest conversation where everyone is heard equally, but it always strikes me how so many things I only associated with the Poles I interacted with and the relatives are also true on a larger scale. As though my childhood mind was suddenly justified in thinking that this couldn’t just be limited to one family and the branches it sprouted or had sprouted. Incidentally, the next generation has now been of age for quite some time, so it would be interesting to see what traumas unfold and what stories they have been told, which surely contrast with mine, if only for the sake of proximity to facts, facts easily checked via history books and local administrative bodies. 

Remembering those who have been is a private matter, and while there is certainly comfort in rituals and assorted traditions, tackling your memories as you see fit also needs to be – if not outright celebrated – at least respected.