Grave encounters

Would you live next door to a cemetery? Most French people would run a mile but Joy Brodier finds it fascinating, especially around October time

- Joy Brodier

Do you like visiting cemeteries? In the UK we lived very close to one and it was a popular route to walk into town, with plenty of mature trees, squirrels, birds and a large wild flower patch, yellow with dandelions in the spring.

Maybe that’s why we had no problem with buying a house overlooking a graveyard here in France. The advantages are many. No-one will be able to develop the land and build a block of flats that blocks out our light. It is locked at night and surrounded by a high wall meaning thieves would find it very difficult to break into our house from behind. It is also very calm. No noisy neighbors for us!

We have a little joke that we like to tell people when they visit. The family across the road has the very un-French surname of More. So we tell visitors that we are ‘entre les morts’ – we have the dead, ‘les morts’, on one side and ‘Les Mores’ on the other, so we are between the dead!

We have been very surprised to find that the average French attitude is very different. People will refuse point blank to rent or buy a home next to the dead. The reticence to have tombs near dwellings can be seen in the placement of cemeteries. In the UK the local church usually has a large patch of sacred ground around it, but this is rarely the case in France. Cemeteries are often far from the village and out of sight behind a high brick wall.

FAMILY CONNECTIONS