Keep Me In Your Heart for a While

Shadows are fallin' and I'm runnin' out of breath
Keep me in your heart for a while
If I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less
Keep me in your heart for a while

It is one of the things I love to do: walking in the local cemeteries in the morning. I love it when it's foggy. I love it when it's sunny. I love it when it's snowy. Is there any more peaceful place than a graveyard?

Does it make it strange that I'm not even really there to visit anyone I know, in particular? For these graveyards do not contain family, at least not that I know of. Still, I am a girl who walks quite happily among the quiet dead, singing out my morning greetings. 

A cemetery is always a good spot for quiet contemplation. Read history, as it is written on the grave stones. So learn your place in Time. Understand that it all must end. Use your precious time well. Use it for laughter, for enjoying beauty, for loving life and other people, for DANCING! (Especially if dancing is NOT called for!)

My husband tells me there will be plenty of time for graveyards when I'm finally in one. But that doesn't take away my joy. I grew up playing among the grave stones at our home church. The dead are ever present. Like elephants, we guard their bones.

On this morning, I stopped at Meyer Cemetery, along route 550 not far from State College. It is full of pretty stones and many kind remembrances. It sits among the quiet golden farm fields, under gently rolling mountains. It feels - to me - like home.

This was one of my favorite cemetery scenes on this day: a grave stone, well tended, and surrounded by objects loved by the faithful departed. A pretty lantern. Purple flowers. A fairy with a magic gazing ball. To honor and celebrate one who may be gone from us, for now, but not forgotten: we'll keep you in our heart for a while.

The song, of course, is the wonderful Warren Zevon tune, Keep Me In Your Heart. I'm including several covers too: one by Zevon's co-author Jorge Calderon, performed with Jennifer Warnes; one by Eddie Vedder; and the last one by the Wailin' Jennys.