The Dead Zone

 

It's the anniversary of my mother's death and that time of the year when a certain morbidity lurks in the hidden recesses of my mind. Mortality haunts me. It didn't help to read a book last week about a nineteenth-century sculptor who made some really cool grave monuments nor order more books on tomb sculptures and cemetery traditions from the library so I could gaze upon photos of crying cherubs and sobbing angels. And it definitely didn't help to find Peter's dead body. The timing for these things is so oddly coincidental. This is my very own personal holiday of death. It unexpectedly surfaces every year at the same time. At least now I understand what causes this mind fuck. So I did what any rational-minded, healthy person would do: I hung out at a few cemeteries amongst the dead and I felt right at home. This also motivated me to drag Peter's decaying carcass out from under the garden shed and give him a proper burial.

 

My Rabbit God statue has been re-purposed and it serves as Peter's very own grave sculpture.


He's buried in the middle of the sunflower garden
where he loved to lounge.

He's such a lucky bunny even in death. Now I have a place I can honor him and remember him fondly as I lay bright and cheerful flowers on the site. He was loved. It does make me feel better.

Tomb sculptures amaze me. Really good graveyard statues can incite profound emotion and sympathy. I love the distraught figures collapsed at the foot of a grave in pitiful despair or prostrated across it in agony. They weep loudly in silence. The pain is palatable. Loved ones left behind in mourning paid an enormous amount of money to make an immortal expression of their grief.  This is really more about love than death. The adoration is heart-wrenching; the passion is envious. I can't post a copyright-protected photograph of my current favorite tomb sculpture, but click HERE for a link. It's from the Staglieno Cemetery in Genoa, Italy. Ah! Those Italians are so passionate! Even death is sexy.

In my former life I traveled a lot and was drawn to graveyards. I was definitely not a normal tourist in any sense of the word and preferred to spend my time looking at the local dead. "Garden" style cemeteries in Europe were developed in the nineteenth century and the best examples are in Paris where monuments to the dead span hundreds of acres and are like cities with tomb-lined, street-like walkways. Those tombs are as big as houses with elaborate decorations rivaling that of palaces or stately homes. For someone who has been fascinated by death since a child, it was the ultimate tourist experience!

With my recent readings I discovered the tomb of Croce-Spinelli and Sivel in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. I have been to Pere Lachaise, but don't recall this sculpture. The back story fascinates me. Three French men in 1875 set out in a hot air balloon to break ascension records. They knew they would need oxygen at high levels, but were unaware of the consequences of oxygen deprivation. They became incoherent and, therefore, unable to use their oxygen contraptions in time. Two of them died and the third lived to tell the tale. This, however, isn't the most interesting aspect of their story. The two men who died were buried together and their stone effigies are holding hands. Granted, today homosexuality is much more accepted, but this was back in the 1800s. The French are known for being more open-minded about sex of any kind so maybe I shouldn't be surprised. It would be interesting to know what the reception was at the time of the unveiling of the sculpture. Who ordered and paid for the monument? Today people leave flowers in their linked hands.

 

In a tiny town about an hour's drive away is an even tinier cemetery that includes the family burial plot for my great grandparents and their nine children.



 

The only person not buried here is their sixth child, my grandfather, who wanted to be buried next to my mother. When I was younger I thought his decision was a dishonor to his family, but my grandfather assured me my mother wanted to be buried in her hometown and he considered this a convenience since he would be close enough to visit her grave regularly. His sacrifice speaks to his love for her. I'm surprised my mother doesn't have a huge tomb with crying angels hanging around it. In fact, her gravestone is fairly standard, bland, and very American.

No monuments here. Just square slabs of boredom. Blah.
This style of cemetery is call a "memorial cemetery".
Very popular in America.

Through tidbits of family stories I have forged a connection with one distant aunt and uncle in the Little Falls Cemetery.



 

My aunt Carrie was hit by a train. Details were never given only poor Carrie was young and childless. (In my grandparents' time, "childless" was used as a metaphor for "failed to live life to the fullest." It was always my plan to be childless so I always resented this assumption. Procreation not the only way to live a full life.) This obscure chapter of family history was never discussed. She was walking at the time. That's all I know. What were the circumstances? Why was she walking in front of a train? I wish I knew more. I have a photograph of the whole family posed in front of their farm house. In it Carrie is twelve years old. I always think of her as twelve years old so it's always surprising to me to see her gravestone and remember she was thirty-five when she died. Still too young.

Sorry it's so blurry. The portrait is quite large and backed on stiff cardboard
so it doesn't fit on my photocopier. See Cap the dog?

My great uncle lived for eighty years in the same, tiny town right up until the day he died. He never married and had no children. I have several photos of him. He's sixteen years old in the family portrait. This was an era when smiling or showing emotion in a photo wasn't appropriate so to see his huge grin and the glimmer in his eye suggests he was up to something. His brother standing next to him in the back row has the same devious look. Something was going on!

Another is a studio portrait of him when he is about 20 years old with the typical, turn-of-the-century accouterments suggesting social class and status: furniture, a book, backdrop and curtains. It was taken just before he signed up for military duty in World War I.

Again, I apologize for the blur. It's in a frame.

The third is a photograph of him with his best friend:

They might be holding hands? I don't know. Again, I wish I knew more details. I remember taking food to him with my grandfather when I was a child right before he died. Although he was quite self-reliant, living in his own house and able to get around by walking very slowly, I remember feeling badly for him for being so old and not having any children to take care of him. I thought it was wrong he was so alone. I thought someone needed to clean his house. I really liked that my grandfather, his younger brother, was helping him. Eighty years is a long time. Why don't I know more about him? How can a life that long be so easily forgotten? I have his portrait hanging on my wall. He deserves to be remembered by someone.

I find it fascinating how easily and quickly people are forgotten after they die. In most cases, unless the person did something astounding, celebratory, or in some way memorable, they disappear after a generation or two. If they were childless perhaps sooner. My mother had two children and as long as we live, she is remembered, but her grandchildren never knew her and have no memories to extend her existence.  I know few details about the lives of either my aunt or uncle. Like them I am also childless and I expect I will be quickly forgotten so our common fate is our bond. This mortality check is a constant reminder of my current isolation. Will I be remembered by anyone a year after I die, let alone a generation? If no one knows me in my self-imposed exile and isolation, do I really exist? What will I leave behind? What is my legacy?

While I was visiting the tiny town I stopped in a newly established antique store. The owner and I got to talking about a portrait she had of a woman from the nineteenth century. She bought it in a garage sale, but hoped someone in the area would recognize the woman. I told her I doubt it as that's what happens to portraits when there is no one left in the family to keep them. The family stories are lost and the photographs end up in a yard sale or worse, at the garbage dump. It makes me sad to see the portraits of someone's relatives being sold at a yard sale. That's the great thing about stone memorials. It's a normal person's opportunity for some immortality.

Cemeteries weren't created for the dead. They are for the living so that those of us in mourning have a place to go to express it. The "garden" cemetery is a relatively modern concept as mass graves on the outskirts of town were the rage prior to the nineteenth century, unless, of course, you were wealthy. Grave markers and tombstones represent memories and serve as reminders of a life lived, but only for those left behind who have those memories. I think that's why I like grave stones with sculptures, poems, epitaphs, reliefs, etchings or other biographical clues. I've often thought it would be fun to have a monumentally naked woman crying in agony over my dead body so those who didn't know me would at least ponder who I was. Oh, she must have been important! Or maybe just rich? Now that I'm older, practical, and less romantic I think I'd rather be cremated and have my ashes thrown into the ocean to float away into non-existence.