Seven Photos of Père Lachaise Cemetery

This is a third installment of photos from my somewhat recent trip to Paris (click here or here to see others). These photos were taken at Père Lachaise Cemetery. And while it may seem morbid to some to go on vacation across an ocean and on a different continent and visit a cemetery full of people you never met, it's really not...it's actually a beautiful place and a moving experience. This was my third time at this cemetery. Yes, of course Jim Morrison is buried here, but there are many other notable graves worth seeing; maps are sold at the gate and most tour books list them as well. One of the more moving tombs was that of Oscar Wilde. That's the front of it pictured below. You can see the lipstick kiss someone left on his monument; the sides of it are virtually covered in lipstick kisses and notes scrawled in lipstick. You'll see many tourists here, and it seems weird to me, in a way...that there are tourists for graves (and I was one of them). It's a large cemetery and my son and I walked for an hour or two, sometimes in silence. And in those moments of silence, as I looked across the tombs and graves, the following Bible verse came to mind.

1  There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

²     a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

 Ecclesiastes 3:1-9

To take an online virtual tour of the cemetery, click here.

Urban Simplicity.