St. Mary’s Cemetery, Oakland, California
Tonight is my mom’s last night in San Francisco, so I’m going to hold off on writing this week’s Cemetery of the Week until tomorrow. I have a plan, but it requires research to do it justice.
Instead, I offer this photo, taken last January, while I roamed around Oakland, California with my friend Dorian. The picture serves as my desktop background. I love it because it combines the complicated blue of the sky with many shades of green and the various colors of stone.
Of all the elements in a graveyard, I’d say the colors are my favorite. There is something so restful about the combination of sky and foliage, whether it’s the deep verdant lawns in Michigan or the golden meadows of the California coast beneath the spectrum of white that makes up clouds or the unbroken cerulean of sky that stretches from horizon to horizon. Sky blue is my favorite color, but emerald green is a very close second.
Of course, I love this photo because it captures the steepness of St. Mary’s Cemetery and the crazy lean of the old stones. It’s not often that I can sum a cemetery up in one photograph, but this one does a good job of capturing St. Mary’s, which lies beside the wealthier and better known Mountain View Cemetery at the end of Piedmont Avenue.
Some cemeteries don’t need their own Cemetery of the Week to be enjoyable. This one is lovely and worth a visit, if only to absorb the colors of sun and sky and stone.
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