This was my initial view:
The first thing that really struck me were how many towers and oversized monuments there were. More importantly, why? I'm going to go ahead and state the obvious: these people are dead. We hardly know anything about their lives based on their gravestones. We know their names, when they lived, and maybe a few extra details about family. Yet these gravestones are here and they seem to scream their self importance. Were these more important people? Not in my mind they weren't. I do not like the idea of anyone being inherently more important than anyone else. Some say that death is the great equalizer but I'm not sure that it needs to be. Importance is, like many things, an illusion.
I also looked closely a several markers. The growth on them is fascinating. The patterns, the discoloration of the stones, and the concept of life growing on a symbol of death were intriguing to me.
Ms. Cora Belle's stone got my attention because her name is lovely. I thought she was worth a mention because I know a bit about the time in which she lived. She was born solidly within the Victorian Era. Which was British, but so influential as to affect America at the time as well. She then lived to age of 71, which was beyond the life expectancy of the time. She would have seen the Jazz Age in its entirety and the very beginning of the Great Depression with the stock market crash of October 1929. What did she think of the events around her? Growing up in a time where Victorian morality was in vogue, what did she think of the Jazz Age? Was she an old woman who clung to propriety and tradition, or was did she view the events with the gaze of modernity? Was she concerned about the stock market crash? Did she imagine how bad things would get? We don't know. We will probably never know because this is just a rock in the ground. And a rock meant to remind people of us often fails at even that.
The internet and rapid development of technology will, I'm sure, have a huge impact on remembrance. Will there someday be sites with links to the old social media accounts of the dead? Will we scroll through their lives? Just because those sites exist, will anyone even care? Probably not any more than they do now.
This made me laugh out loud. Why in the world would you make your grave marker a gigantic, uncomfortable bench? Did the family love him/her so much that they commissioned a large memorial? Did they just have money to blow? Did the person want attention brought to their grave based on originality points? Did they want people to reap some small enjoyment from their death by giving them a place to rest or meditate? I could not fathom what the true reason might be. I did sit on it. It made me feel uncomfortable in a couple of different ways.
This creeped me out because I first saw it out of the corner of my eye. And let's be honest, seeing a stray disembodied hand in a graveyard is creepy. There's probably not any significance to the fact that it is holding a rose. I would like to think there is though. Maybe it was chosen by a loved one. They wanted to "leave flowers" in a more permanent way. The rose will survive, not forever, but virtually so. The whole idea is so hopelessly beautiful and romantic it hurts. There's also the decidedly more pessimistic and cynical view that they would have chosen it to relieve them of their flower leaving duties. A kind of short cut. However, we will probably never know so we can imagine it however we want. We're all stories in the end, and that's part of the beauty of stories.
I'll leave you with these last two pictures just because I find them peaceful.
This trip was highly meditative for me. I needed to think where no one would interrupt me with chatter. I thought a lot about death, as is expected on cemetery visits. I was struck by the impermanence of life and just how many people had lived. Our lives overlap and tangle but still: no one makes it out alive. We make a last ditch effort to be remembered. Some through flashy or unique stones. These attempts to survive are futile though, if no one is around to see them. Once the people who loved you most are gone, who else will see and care? It reminded me that I should live the life I have now. It's the only one I know that I have and I didn't buy the warranty.
