Article: Where the Past Is Prologue

"HOLD your breath!" my big sister would demand when we drove by a cemetery. "Hold your breath or you'll wake the dead!"

At the Congressional Cemetery, the dead are probably awake. Picnickers unfurl blankets and gab over fried chicken and Coke; neighbors weave through the tombstone maze on morning jaunts; and dogs, mine included, sniff the ground like anteaters, searching for crumbs.

As a child I played in church cemeteries so I feel at home here, at once relaxed and reverent. "Graveyards remind you that everyone dies and it's okay," my friend Nancy summarizes. Especially here, where earth and sky are vibrant with chattery birds, one can't help but feel moved, fortunate, and very much ...

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