Week 8 Journal

Morris contributes to our understanding of everyday writing by telling us that graveyards are a way of separating the living from the dead, and the living always know what graveyards are for because almost all graveyards look the same and serve one purpose:  house the bodies of the deceased. Each individual gravestone signifies the life of a person, sometimes with a quote or small explanation of who they were, which makes gravestones memorials. We automatically associate gravestones with death because we know what they are for, it is something we have seen before and can instantly recognize, which makes it everyday writing. Graveyards are always in a community, and some people pass one on their way to work or school every day. Others make it a habit to visit deceased loved ones to lay fresh flowers or water planted ones on the grave. My grandma in Germany waters the family grave every week, and so do many others that live in her village. Whether they personally know the residents of the grave or not, the flowers on the grave are always kept alive or replaced by new ones when they do not return the next spring. Morris talks about different types of grave markers, some being the classic round-topped headstone and others sculptures. Perhaps the people whose grave markers that are either sculptures or are large and made from expensive stone come from a family with money. If they did not they may have been very loved and their family decided they deserved a fancy headstone. Those with plain headstones might come from a family of little money or may have been disliked. What a person was like in real life can be reflected through their headstone, whether it is through what is written or simply the headstone itself. Graveyards speak volumes, and the pages are the gravestones inside.