The Great Conjunction was up there this winter solstice evening. For us, behind all the clouds.

As December days go, Sunday was above-freezing tolerable, and unlike today, mostly clear. A good day for being outdoors for a while, which is what I did at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.

Queen of Heaven is the southernmost of a pair of large suburban Catholic cemeteries, adjacent to each other, with a major east-west thoroughfare, Roosevelt Road, separating them. To the north is Mount Carmel Cemetery, permanent home to bishops, gangsters, Boer sympathizers and many others.

Queen of Heaven is newer, post-WWII, and more understated of the two, but with its own charms.

Including a handful of stately mausoleums.
Pretty soon I began to notice the Christmas decorations. A lot of them. I was inordinately pleased by the sight. I ought to visit more cemeteries in December.

I also noticed that the cemetery was busy. Not urban center busy, but busy for a cemetery. Even at the largest and most picturesque cemeteries, I’m very often the only person in sight, or one of two, including groundskeepers sometimes.

On Sunday at Queen of Heaven, I saw a dozen people or more by themselves or in couples, along with three or four small knots of people. Those gatherings didn’t have the look of funerals. I got close enough to one of the groups, driving by slowly, that I could see the people gathered around a new grave, maybe a few months old. Must have been their first Christmas without the deceased, and there were there to pay their respects. Talk about life-affirming.