The Oldest Catholic Cemetery

This North Parramatta cemetery is one I’ve always wanted to visit.

 The people buried here are the underclass: people from the Female Factory, the orphanages, the lunatic asylum.

There are the Irish, German, Indigenous, French, Chinese, Scottish Australians.

 I don’t like to walk on graves.

 Maybe this is a Muslim thing despite a lack of worry about ghosts. The spirit is underground and it is unlikely to leave its grave to disturb the living.

 What happens if it’s a Catholic spirit and the living is Muslim or another religion? What then?

 I am alone. The ghosts feel close.

 Once in Jordan, I was amongst orange stone and the jinn felt very near. It’s a sense I’ve had a few times in my life.

 With my colleagues, we discuss funeral rites. It’s a dark subject for recess but for each of us, originally from elsewhere, it’s a subject that is endlessly fascinating.

 I don’t see the subject of death as morbid. I once explained to a stranger that it is a good philosophy to live every day with a conscious sense of one’s own mortality.

 He was horrified.

 Philosophical differences, I guess.

 I have Alguien camina sobre tu tumba by Mariana Enríquez which hasn’t appeared yet in English. In this travel book, Enriquez visits famous cemeteries around the world. She recommends that any visitor to Buenos Aires go to Recoleta Cemetery. It is a gorgeous cemetery, very sombre, artistic and beautiful.

 I think about writing a ghost story in Parramatta. If I did, it would be set here in this Catholic cemetery.