The Healing Journey

August 26, 2025

Even as a young girl, Carolyn loved to go walking among the tombstones at the old cemetery in Stratford beside Boothe Memorial Park, where the graves were etched with the traditional symbols of fallen willow trees, doves, urns and lilies.

Once, she even took a dare and went there at night because her friends claimed it was haunted, and to this day she insists she saw a luminous presence, somewhat resembling a lace curtain billowing in the breeze, flitting between the graves.

For Carolyn, cemeteries were a combination of history and sadness and reverence. She would read the epitaphs, admire the engraved figures, which in modern times are etched by lasers. Sometimes she would sit down by her parents’ grave in Shelton beneath tall pines and talk to them.

As she wandered through there on Indian summer afternoons, she was surprised to see so many familiar names from her past. Perhaps they were parents of her classmates. One was the family grave of the funeral director who had helped her family many times make arrangements for wakes and burials. Another grave she discovered was that of her next-door neighbors growing up. The husband had died long ago, but the wife was, she calculated, still alive and about 103 years old.

She said a prayer for them and thought of the countless afternoons she had spent at their house, playing with their children. So this is where it ended. All those years of joy came to an end here in a tranquil place overlooking the Housatonic River. Each time she came upon a familiar name, she paused a moment or two and said a prayer, and left them with the uplifting thought, “I hope you’re doing well. Someday we’ll meet again.”
©J Pisani

***