Weekly Photo Challenge: Merge

The Book of Love, Avondale Cemetery

My daughter wants to grow up to be a pirate.  When I planned our annual August vacation to visit my parents in Michigan, my mom suggested we make a road trip into Canada to see The Pirates of Penzance at the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Ontario.

Of course, I promptly jumped on the internet to check if Stratford had a cemetery worth visiting.

Avondale Cemetery is lovely.  (It will be the Cemetery of the Week tomorrow.)  The cemetery rises from the road to a high flat spot that overlooks a cornfield which seemed to stretch off into space.  While my dad waited in the air-conditioned Buick and my daughter sat in the grass under an old pine tree to read a book about befriending unicorns, I poked around with my camera, trying to sum the place up in one perfect image.

The photo above was the last one I took before we had to run back into town to pick my mother up from her visit to the theater museum.  I was drawn to this headstone because of its shape.  Books aren’t rare in graveyards, but they are uncommon.  I don’t remember ever seeing one standing up like this one.  I like the crease on its spine and the grooves that indicate the pages.  I like its size and its heft, its permanence.

I especially like that Evelyn survived Harold for 32 years, but she chose to be reunited with him in the end.  I wondered what stories the real book of their love would tell.

Cemetery of the Week #72: Avondale Cemetery, Stratford, Ontario, Canada