Scarecrow in the Cemetery

Ah, All Saints Day! If I had to choose only five or six days of the year (what a pleasant thought) on which I could attend church, I would include All Saints Day. (Another day would be Saint Gemma Day. "Saint who?" you ask? Google her website. What a looker! I think I have an embarrassing crush on a dead saint.) What a day of cosmological and eschatological import! A day to remember the metaphysical communion of all the living and the dead. It's a day to be spent outside watching the clouds and visiting cemeteries.

And so when I worked for a church in Ohio, every year on November 1st I would walk to the cemetery behind the church. The graveyard was small and old, and it was adjacent to the street across from which was a shopping center. I would sit against the giant tree next to graves, sinking a foot into the pile of fallen autumn leaves, watching the moving clouds, thinking, praying. And then it would happen---every year the same thing. A police car would stop on the street sidewalk bordering the cemetery. Onto my wrists would the cop's handcuffs go---me, a bum dangerous looking and loitering on private property, at least according to any one of the store clerks across the street who would call the police upon spotting me squatted in the leaves. Following this would be my usual protest and the usual walk over to the church rectory where my pastor would vouch for my release. I wonder if that treatment by clerks and police qualify as a kind of martyrdom for my eventual canonization? "Saint Old Doc, patron of cemetery loiterers"---has a nice ring to it.

-Old Doc