"Living"

I took a walk in the Beechwood National Cemetery yesterday. The sky was like the skies of my childhood, a crisp blue with no sign of haze, complement no doubt of the reduction in pollution during the pandemic. The temperature was a perfect 21℃ with a gentle breeze.

I wandered down a path that I seldom take in the older section of the burial ground, and was browsing at the names on tombstones when one of them attracted my attention. At first, I could not make it out clearly but then I finally deciphered the single word on it, the name of the person buried there: “Living”. I could not help but chuckle at the irony of such a name for someone who had been among the dead for many decades.  

I spent the remainder of my leisurely stroll musing about this. I wondered what it would be like to be “Living” instead of “Côté”. Would that change my way of seeing things? Would I not feel myself daily defying death and boldly challenging it by my very existence – a quixotic character, certainly, condemned to eventually fail, but nonetheless bravely proclaiming until my last breath and even beyond the grave, “I am Living!”

Setting all humour aside, I must admit that there is also something very prophetic about such a family name: are we not all destined for resurrection in Christ and thus to be “Living” for eternity.