graveyards

A Tombstone Tourist Does Seattle

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Lake View Cemetery, Seattle, Washington.

My vacation itinerary always includes a cemetery or two…or three. Sure, I love checking out the art scene in a new city, historical sites, shopping and eating. I’m a foodie too, definitely. But you see an entirely different side of a place when you visit its graves, don’t you think?

Lake View Cemetery, Seattle, Washington

On my recent trip to Seattle, I did my usual vacation prep and Mapquested cemeteries in the area. There are about six, but with the coffee and the chocolate and the glass museums and the history and… did I mention the chocolate? I only had time for Lake View. What a jewel!

I wondered who left the flower, descendant or art lover.

These gnarly, twisted trees were everywhere.

Lake View was established back in 1872 and sits up on Capital Hill northeast of downtown Seattle. One of those cool, old neighborhoods that just oozes character has grown up around it so it’s a bit of a twisty trek to get there. But worth it! The monuments are a great mix of styles, old and new, East and West.

This one says, “The more people I meet, the more I love my cat.”

I love the name and the calligraphy.

A murder of crows  claims the cemetery grounds and every monument in them. The birds are smart and wary and hard to get a decent picture of, but their raucous chatter never stopped.

Keeping watch over her domain.

He knew his grave would end up being a perch for crows anyway.

So, for a short visit to Seattle, I’d put Lake View, the EMP Museum (AWESOME), the Chihuly glass museum and all the European sipping chocolate you can sample on my list of must-do’s. Anybody have any other suggestions for a Seattle trip? I definitely want to go back.  I know that Jimi Hendrix is buried in Greenwood Memorial nearby. Anybody been there?

It’s All About the View

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Dungeness, Washington

I’m back. Life and travel kept me from posting for a while. The good news is I brought pictures!

Walnut Glen, Booneville, Missouri

Have you ever noticed how many cemeteries have names like: Fairview, Grandview,  and Lakeview? Or how about the ones that feature their landscaping like: Walnut Glen, Tall Oaks, Floral Hills?

Floral Hills, Kansas City, Missouri

Are there professional cemetary landscape architects? Must be. Their handiwork is obvious sometimes. At the very least, in most cemeteries somebody planned out the roads.

Mount Olivet, Kearney, Missouri

The cemetery above commands the view from the highest hill in town. It probably used to be gorgeous. Though I wouldn’t call it that anymore, it’s still interesting…vital…colorful?

Happy Homestead, South Lake Tahoe, California

As gorgeous as some of the more manicured cemeteries are, I love the good old-fashioned graveyards best. The ones with narrow, winding roads, or paths, or nothing at all.

Fairview, Kearney, Missouri

Mount Vernon, Atchison, Kansas

Those graveyards tend to have a lot of benches. I always make a point to take a seat. It felt uncomfortable at first, but a bench is an invitation, right? It’s kind of rude to ignore it.

Walnut Glen, Booneville, Missouri

Do you think that people take such care to make cemeteries beautiful for the living or the dead?

Virginia City, Nevada

What’s in a Name?

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Ninety-nine percent of the time that’s all you get, names and dates.

 Often “Mother” or “Father”, “wife of.”

But as I’ve said before, that can be enough to set my imagination  running. For instance, did this woman’s momma really name her Grandma?  Or had she been one for so long when she died that everybody’d forgotten her first name…and the rest of her life?

The old-timey names make me smile.

Harry and Mary Tootle, you know they ust had to be a fun couple!  And I’m always on the lookout for Moore’s.  It’s rare, in the Midwest not to find at least one in every cemetery. Someday, I’ll do a more and more Moore’s post.

And this little one had to have been somebody’s darling. It’s amazing how much a name and dates can say.

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Dog Day Afternoon

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These two little guys definitely had someplace to be. I spotted them trotting up the road through Walnut Glen Cemetery in Booneville, Missouri this summer.

Note the lolling tongue. It was one of those 104 degree days. Mine was lolling too.

But enduring the heat was worth it. This is a great old cemetery. Aptly named. The towering trees must be at least a century old.
Not sure if it was the dappled shade or the sweltering heat, but unlike the dogs, I was in the mood for a long, slow ramble through the grounds.

There was plenty to see.

Just FYI, I don’t put captions on my photos, but if you hover over them you usually get their location and sometimes a comment. If I ever neglect to tell you where something is that you’d like to go visit yourself, just ask.

If only we had a century long time-lapse of this tree’s life and death growing up around this tombstone. Pretty cool.

Another little side note; I decided to stop here on my trip because Walnut Glen’s the name I gave the cemetery in my novel. It was total chance. I thought I’d made it up.  I’m always looking for my characters’ names too, and mine, friends and family.  Is that maybe a little morbid? Haven’t found them yet, at least not first and last together.

But cemeteries are great places to find character names!

Here’s one of the carved tree stumps Artsifrtsy commented on a few posts back. You’ll find them in almost every cemetery of a certain age. She told me that many were made for members of a service organization called Woodmen of the World that still exists. I had no idea!

This little guy was only about an inch long, but his colors caught my eye. What a beauty! RIP

Mourners and Guardians

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Catherine Tracy clings to her only daughter Kate, who died in 1854 at the age of seventeen.

The neglected lichen-covered monument still vividly evokes a mother’s grief even 150 years later. I imagine Catherine coming to stand at the grave when the statue was new, then ten years later and twenty-five. The stone’s forever. I wonder how her feelings about it changed.

Protestant Cemetery, Rome, Italy

Sculptures always get my camera clicking when I explore a graveyard. Some are just gorgeous. Others tug at my heart stings or get me thinking. There are the ones like Kate Tracy’s that are obviously there for the particular benefit of her grieving family.

But I also see many less specific, but no less touching guardians and traditional icons.

And then there are the in-your-face, ostentatious monuments. The only thing they say about the deceased is, I WAS RICH! I like those too.

Ordinary stones are great. Heck, I can get excited just reading the names and dates – Did they lose all of their kids in the flu epidemic? – She died in childbirth. He never remarried? – She may have been poor, but somebody sure loved her….

But sculptures can say as much as epitaphs. Maybe not what the mourners intended. Maybe much more. Take a look at nine-year-old Ryan Allen Scott Vanden Broeder’s guardian. This one astounds me. I know there’s a story here, but no amount of googling revealed it. What do you think?