Whenever I pass a cemetery in a new city or country, I find it difficult not to enter.

To me, cemeteries are silent mirrors of culture. Where do people bury their dead, and how? How do they say goodbye? What do they write on the graves? Do they believe in another life? Do they preserve names through statues and carvings, cremate the dead, or return them quietly to the earth without gravestones or elaborate structures?

The way people bury their dead, the shapes of the graves, and the information written on them can tell you a great deal about a society or religious community. Sometimes, you also learn something about the person buried there. Some graves were clearly prepared with great care, while others carry no name at all.

I recently visited Préville Cemetery in Nancy, France, and spent some time observing the graves and the people who came to visit them.

I saw an elderly woman, probably in her eighties or older, speaking for a long time beside one of the graves. I could not tell whether she was praying or simply talking to someone she had loved and lost.

As I passed, I said, “Bonjour.” She did not hear me at first, so I repeated it when I came closer. She replied warmly, “Bonjour, monsieur,” glanced at me briefly, and then returned to her quiet conversation.

Most of the visitors that day were elderly.

Cemeteries reduce everything to its essence. The story of a whole life appears before you in its simplest form: a name, a date of birth, and a date of death. Your imagination has to fill in everything else.

A family grave with three children, two of whom died young. How did they die? Was it an illness or an accident? The third lived to old age.

A couple who died only months apart. Did one follow the other out of grief?

A family of seven, all gone within a few years.

A couple who lived for almost a century. How much history passed before their eyes? How many people they loved did they have to bury?

A crumbling headstone with something like “You will not be forgotten” barely visible beneath the dirt.

New graves beside old ones that were slowly falling apart, as though life and death had never stopped replacing each other.

One grave had no marker at all. No name. It was as though the person buried there had turned their back on the world with quiet indifference.

Some graves were clearly cared for. Someone had visited them recently. Others were completely neglected, as if time itself had decided to forget them. Or perhaps no one was left to remember.

Personally, I am drawn to simple graves, like those encouraged in some Islamic traditions and found in other religions as well. No decoration and no attempt to resist time.

There is something in that simplicity that brings us back to one of life’s unavoidable truths:

We are mortal.

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