Cemetery Jewels. . .

I was backsliding again today. . . while out for a two hour hike this afternoon with my wife, I couldn't resist the urge to push open the ancient iron gates and step into an old cemetery in a little village that is about an hour's walk from where we live. And as is usually the case in old French cemeteries, there were some gems.
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Take this heart, for example, in all my years of poking around in cemeteries, I've never seen one quite like this, and I thought the way the metal had weathered between copper-green and iron-rust was simply beautiful. The story it told of a man who had lost his 29 year old wife was heartbreaking.
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This open book, which was so small I could barely read it, measuring maybe 4 inches by 6 inches, was another "first" for me. Roughly translated it says : "The book of life is the supreme book, one cannot close it or open it by choice. One might like to return to the page where one was in love, but the page where one dies is already in one's fingers."

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I loved the iron work around this circular metal plaque...
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This is another piece of the ceramic kitsch still visible on older tombs... see earlier posting with more examples of this funerary artform. . .

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In the "faces from the past" category, I loved this gentleman's beard, and for your information, his family name was : PROOT (may he rest in peace)

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This last portrait was so faded there was little left but a ghostly gaze from under a cap. . .
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