The beautiful colors of fall have fallen now.  November is a month of greys, maroons, and browns, of  naked grey branches stark against the sky.  So, I thought you might enjoy a last look at the earlier glories of October, resplendent in my photos from the Hope Cemetery of Worcester, Mass.  Let’s start with this lovely line of sugar maples turning into flame.

Yang loves to see contrasting colors, and this phenomena is often on display early in the foliage season, when some trees, still bright green, form a gorgeous contrast with the flame of their more precocious brethren.

In the cemetery, the lovely autumn colors often form a striking contrast with the white or grey of wonderfully sculpted monuments in relief or freestanding statuary.

Then, there is this mausoleum haloed by the green being subsumed by peach and lemony yellow leaves.

The statuary itself is a pleasure to view.  I was particularly taken by this one of a mother comforting her child.  Does it bespeak the death of an actual mother who would have guided her daughter heavenward or does it tell a story of the mother guiding her daughter from beyond the vale?  Perhaps both mother and daughter are now attaining spiritual heights together in the next world?

It does seem that the opening gates on this tomb stone bespeak the gates of the death opening onto eternal life.

Other symbolic monuments include the  tree stump representing a life cut short.

There is the book of life.

The book of life for a Mason.

The sad, kneeling, lost child, its form melted away by time and the elements, the stone from which it was carved as transient as human life.

Yet this relief’s portrait reinforces the bond of parent and child through life and death and afterlife.

Perhaps most intriguing as a symbol of life springing from death was this natural image.  We found an old, battered, on its last roots deciduous tree hosting, providing shelter and sustenance, for a baby pine tree.  How unlikely that these two should come together and grow together.  Who knows how long either will last, but they do create an unexpected surge of life.