12/05/2003: "Necro tour II"
Music: A crackling fireMood: Ready for my run
It did snow yesterday, but not until late, so we easily survived the necro tour of family grave plots without cracking up on the highway.
If you take a walk through any cemetery that has been around for a couple of hundred years, you can see the evolution in the way society thinks about death.
The newest graves, occupied by some of my distant relatives, are marked by nothing more than flat bronze markers that sit flush with the ground. Instead of looking out from your car and seeing hulking granite markers with family names carved in them, it’s more like you’re looking across a golf course. You get out and wander around, scanning names until you find the one you want.
If this trend in burying the dead is to be more harmonious with nature, to blend the life and death of the individual into the greater whole, then good enough. I suspect the flat-marker fields have more to do with saving money and our general inability to deal with death. A monument to a dead person is, in a way, a monument to Death, a heavy, expensive, three-dimensional reminder that mom and dad were mortal, and so are you, so just wait. To quote one of my favorite epitaphs: “As you are, I was; as I am, you will be.”
My grandparents’ graves, which are from the early 1960s, are marked with a nice big granite marker that says “Romkey.” The individual graves have the metal plaques. My father’s is already waiting for him; all the grave needs the is for the dates to filled in and a casket dropped into a hole. I thought about asking him to lie down on the grass for a picture, but it was sleeting and we were going to lunch afterward our visit to those Romkeys now taking the Big Sleep.
The original Romkey plot is farther back in Aspen Grove Cemetery, overlooking Peaceful Valley Drive.
The farther back you go in time, the fancier the graves become, and our family's graves are no exception. My relatives in this spot all died between the early 1900s and the 1930s. There’s a big granite marker with our family name, then individual granite markers for each person, including my aunt, who died the day she was born. No cheap metal signs for the graves of these stalwart prairie individualists! The outline for the plot is marked by four granite cubes, each engraved with the initial “R.”
My favorite family grave is a little further on, an enormous limestone mausoleum where my great-great aunt Anna is buried. She married into the Andre family, so that’s the name on the mortuary temple. The Andres were in the shoe business. Apparently, there was a lot of money in shoes back in the 1880s.
My first reaction to Aunt Anna’s mausoleum was to wonder why anybody in their right mind would spend so much money on a place to park their casket. But the more I thought about it, the more sense in made. You’re only alive a short time, but you’re dead forever.
My father said you used to be able to go into the mausoleum and look at the crypts, but these days the doors are lag-bolted shut. I thought about asking the cemetery to send someone over to open it up so we could pay our proper respects, but it was sleeting. I’ll save that for another day.
The windows that probably were once stained glass have been filled in with cement, to keep out vandals, or maybe after they were broken out. The limestone is beginning to flake. Even stone wears down with time. And so it seems, nothing lasts. Any Buddhist would tell you the same: Nothing lasts, everything is ultimately unsatisfactory, and ultimately all are one. Standing in a graveyard on a December day with the sleet falling down and the foggy sky coming lower by the minute, it seemed to make perfect sense.
Replies: 3 Comments
- On Monday, December 8th, romkey@qconline.com">Michael said:
Rick: I think a lot of liquor and flowers get left at graves. My dad and his friends shared beers with a flying buddy after burying him. MR Steph: I once worked in a cemetery, and you are exactly right. The thing is, though, that you have to use an old-fashioned push mower to get close to the metal markers. A power mower chews them right up! MR
- On Saturday, December 6th, Rick Millette said:
Cemeterys can be intersting places. While visiting my Mum and Dads grave site I saw a Man standing about 30 yards away. He had a paper bag in his hands. As I watched him he opened the bag which contained a bottle of booze. He then poured some of the bottle into the flower cup on the grave. Then he took a drink himself. All I got think was that it must have been an old drinking buddy.He then put the bottle in the flower holder and left. So did I.
- On Saturday, December 6th, Steph said:
Some kind cemetery worker once confided to me (while I was standing over my close friend's grave, no less) that the stones are flat now to make mowing the grass easier. Romantic notion, isn't it?
