Minnesota Author Finds Solace in Cemeteries After 2 Deadly 2025 Shootings
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Aug 20
Minnesota Author Finds Solace in Cemeteries After 2 Deadly 2025 Shootings
1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Aug 20
Summary
A Minnesota author writes that she spent the summer visiting Upper Midwest cemeteries, using walks and quiet time among graves to steady herself after a traumatic year and a half.
Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis became a refuge, she says, offering a wooded calm that countered the "jittery rhythms" of modern life and let her sit with grief rather than escape it.
That search for solace followed two 2025 attacks in Minnesota: the June assassination of state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, and the August Annunciation Catholic School shooting that killed 2 children and wounded 28 people.
The essay casts cemetery visits as a broader response to personal and civic loss, linking local violence with wider anxieties over war, inequality and the strain of contemporary life.