Death

Shy about hanging out in graveyards?

lsmoore Leave a comment

Here are some common sense guidelines to help you break the ice and indulge your inner taphophile.

1. Ninety-nine percent of cemeteries are closed after dark. However, many have special tours organized at night, especially around Halloween. Watch for those, they’re a blast.

2. Drive and bike through cemeteries slowly, under 15 mph. You’ve got to watch out for the living. Their eyes may be open, but they could be focused on another plane entirely.

3. Yes, it’s okay to walk on the surface above a grave. Unless you’re a professional dancer, hopscotching across acres of graveyard just isn’t practical.

4. Most people come to cemeteries for quiet contemplation.  It’s okay to laugh, cry, have a conversation, among the graves. Just be courteous to other visitors, (alive or dead).

English: «Dia de los muertos» in the indigenou...

5. Picnics, yes or no? In cultures all over the world there are holidays where it’s traditional to picnic on the family plot. Generally, quiet picnics are fine any time of year. If you share a meal with the dead, clean up, take your trash home with you.

6. Listening to music while strolling through a cemetery can be a sublime experience. Just keep your tunes to yourself. Use ear buds or your imagination.

7. It’s okay to touch tombstones, but gently and only with clean hands. Using them for furniture or leap-frog is not okay.
8. Taking rubbings or using shaving cream on hard-to-read tombstones erodes delicate surfaces. Shine a halogen flashlight across the face instead. The shadows, even in the day time will make writing easier to read. I have one with me at all times.
9.  People leave all kinds of tokens on graves. I leave a rock on my mother’s grave every time I visit. Mom liked rocks. It’s okay to look but not to touch. Read a note if it’s left open and exposed, but don’t snoop into a closed envelope.

10. Many lucky dead are planted with peonies, jonquils, and irises. Unless it’s a member of your family, don’t pick the flowers. Unless you’re there as an official volunteer, don’t give in to your inner gardener and pull weeds. You may be denying a loved one a cherished chore.

11. Cemeteries are a weird realm of publicly displayed grief and the promise of privacy. Take all the pictures you want as long as the only living souls in them are the ones you brought along. Never take pictures of strangers. Leave the area if there’s a funeral going on.

12. Volunteer! If you really want to get your fingers dirty, find out if your favorite cemetery has a restoration or care-giving group.  Often volunteers are the only way the oldest cemeteries are maintained at all.

It’s common sense and common courtesy really. Be respectful of the living and the dead.

Graveyard Wildlife

lsmoore Leave a comment

I love all the wildlife that thrives in cemeteries.

Bird songs, bees buzzing, small creatures scuttling among the stones  – life.

Nature going about its business helps set that peaceful mood most cemeteries have.

How could a place with so much wildlife be creepy?

Faces on Tombstones

lsmoore 3 Comments

You meet a lot of people in graveyards.  Every face tells a story.

Sometimes it’s just a story

 of time passed. 

Sometimes it’s a story of sorrow and loss.

 

Sometimes the sheer beauty of a face tells the sculptor’s story. I love those, don’t you?

Hey, thanks everybody who took my poll last week. Who knew there were so many of us taking our lunches to the grave?

Graveyard Picnics?

lsmoore 7 Comments

Fairview, Kearney, MO

I’ve got a couple of favorite lunch spots.

One’s in town and one’s out of town, but I can grab a sandwich and get to both of them in time to have a leisurely meal and get back to work within an hour.  Yes, they’re both cemeteries. Does that make me weird?

Love the patina!

I picnic, sitting in my car, about once a week rain or shine.

I usually have an audio book to listen to, but sometimes I just mellow out to the patter of rain or birds singing, bees buzzing.

It’s perfectly legal to picnic in most cemeteries, basket, blanket and all. Mexican Day of the Dead traditions include partying with your departed loved ones and sharing a full meal right there around the headstone.

Respect is the only rule, for the living and the dead. And, of course, clean up before you leave.

I’ve got to say, that kind of lunch hour gives you a little perspective. It really makes you feel like you’ve gotten away from work!

Just for fun, let’s take a poll.

Why I Love ‘Em

lsmoore 2 Comments

I love graveyards for all that they tell us, for the lives they hint at and the peace they promise every single denizen.  I suppose part of it’s that prurient fascination we all have with tragedy.  The reason Old Yeller’s a classic; why people love to read Nicolas Sparks or Jodi Piccoult and listen to sad country songs; sometimes you just want to cry.

Stone is a beautiful medium.

 Every tombstone’s a sculpture with a story.  Some speak more artfully than others, but it’s often the most crudely carved that tell the best tales.

I like the colors and patterns of lichen on white marble.  I like pictures of the deceased embedded in the stones.  I like glossy new markers with sharp edges and old ones with quaint, old fashioned names.

What sparks my imagination in new and old are the hints they tell about the relationships left behind.  What happened to the family of a row of children who all died in the same year?  How much must a man have loved his wife when she died three decades before him, but he still chose to be buried beside her?

I ran across one way out in the country the other day.  It was a small cemetery on a hill thrust up from among soybean and corn fields.  There were about a hundred people buried there.  The most recent grave was less than a decade old, a double stone.  A boy, 13 years old, was buried on the right, “beloved son.”  On the left was his “loving father.”  The father’s name was there, his birth date, but no death date.  No mom.  Toy race cars and new silk flowers lay on the boy’s side.  Dad’s side was clean, empty.  Somewhere, here in my world, Dad was waiting for the day he’d see his son again.

Doesn’t that make you wonder? It’s amazing how much a few words, a trinket or two and couple of dates in stone can convey about a life, and a death.