Part I

These cemeteries, these obscure places where we bury a nosey basset hound, what do they give to the living? Do they exist solely to respect and honor the dead? I think not.

Three years ago on a grey day in March, Iarrived at a small obscure public cemetery named Homewood Gardens.  Entering the run down administrative shack, I gave the name I was searching for: Josephine Jensen. And, after a belabored scouring through, misplaced computer files, the woman answered with nearly imperceptible contempt. “Oh, she’s in plot G, no wonder we couldn’t find her.”

In our cars, I following her on a battered road through rolling hills, passing headstones intended to only lie flat on the ground, or barely rise above it.  It was an aged and tired place.

It was three weeks earlier that I had been in Ricolleta, where rich, powerful and famous Argentinians are laid to rest near the heart of Buenos Aires: industrialists, presidents, generals and writers.  It was not a place for the poor, the powerless, or the common. It was a miniature city of mausoleums spaced end to end, designed by famous architects, who for centuries carved limestone and marble, cast gold and bronze and set incredible mosaics.  Ricolleta is a city of the dead, with named streets that have signs guiding where to find these incredible monuments, all
surrounding a beautiful and tranquil park. The address, and then the name and accomplishments of the occupants now permanently cast in bronze near the front door of every structure.

It was summer in Buenos Aries–warm, clear, welcoming.  People sat in cafes while a police band assembled to play a concert outside the gates of the littlecity.  Sitting on a folding chair, waiting, I knew that everything that existed within those gates was created not only to remember the dead, but to glorify them, these famous and rich people who were no longer capable of walking the streets of a living city.  This opulence of architecture captured the profound need to express their lives as monumental—now no longer in flesh and words, but in bronze and gold.  ike in
the great living cities, the architecture cries out: “Look at us. Look at our cities built; our wars won; our industries; our culture—look at our power; look at our charity.”

 

Now, as we approached Plot G through the damp air, there I was confronted by an enormous and unwelcome layer of new earth, still grey, still unsettled over what once restful. It was an awkward mound, dumped over the trees, grasses and graves of the past dead, creating another layer for the newly dead and burying even more the buried.  The headstones that had been once standing were removed and thrown against a fence to make room for this new earth for the new dead. Climbing to the plateau, I realized that it didn’t matter; it would never have been possible to place these headstones back where they belonged. No one ever intended to put them make, it would have been impossible anyway.

The woman from the administrative shack walked forward, then to the side, looked around the plateau of the unmarked mound, stomped her feet after a moment and said, “Here.”

“How do you know?”

She said, “I know.”

I asked if there was a marker, or a post, maybe a fence or even a tree.

“No.”

“So, how do you know?”

She said, “I just know.”

 

 

Part II:

Plot G is a pauper’s grave, a place where wevbury our lost and forgotten, where the unclaimed are dropped in trenches twenty-four at a time in county-provided plywood boxes.

In Ricolleta, I wondered why it was so necessary for whatever the dead had in life to continue. What reason was there that the fame, the power, the wealth so powerfully symbolized that it must remain in the consciousness of the living, the consciousness of those that visit in the park and sit on its benches.  And I wondered then why their lifetime was not satisfying enough, not complete enough, recognized enough, that such monument, such architecture, and cities devoted solely to the dead became so necessary. I could not avoid the sense that there existed a lack of satisfaction, a nearly desperate need for these people, or the people knew them, or the culture knew them, to build monuments to themselves that would continue to exist beyond the lifetime of the person buried within it. I could not avoid the sense that within their lifetime, no matter how glorious, no matter how rich, no matter how famous they were, it was a life for them not yet lived enough. Maybe the answer is simple. If they
believed their life, or some aspect of their life, would exist beyond the duration of their life, then what I thought was necessary to be accomplished
within that lifetime was for them not necessary.  If they believed that at end of the life was not the necessary end of what their life could complish, then it becamenecessary that it was so. It became necessary that such that whatever it was that needed to be represented after life, was represented, and that these places, like Ricolleta exist as much for that reason as any other.

The county’s computer had produced a simple piece of paper giving her name, Josephine Mary Jensen, the date of burial and the date and the cause of death: hanging.  She took her life at the age of 58–five years after the younger of her two sons died from an overdose at the age of 29, a few days before Christmas.  After the funeral of her younger, she never heard from her older son again. And after she died, it took over two months for the county to accumulate enough corpses to fill the 24-body minimum, so she was finally buried together with 23 people she had never known, in Row I, Space 9 of the now new upper level of Section GGSam. It was a mass burial which occurred on October 19th, 1995—17 years ago.

I presumed that the other 23 people buried there, one way or another, lived lives not too much different than that of Josephine.  Somehow in the grand shuffle of things, the roll of the dice, the turn of the card,  they missed out and one event lead to another and then the events  grew beyond them, until at the final moment when there was nothing there, no one there.  And I guess of anyone I should understand that. I witnessed it all myself. I was there five years before, at the funeral, watching my brother buried, then turning and walking away for the last time. I do understand the reasons I needed to walk away from my mother, although I will never understand the circumstances that first gave rise to those reasons. Never.  But I do also understand that as abandoned as her life became, as desperate, as forgotten and so much lost of meaning, or just so simply lost of anything–that still the greatest thing I can ever think of, the greatest thing I know, she created. I thank her for that life I have, as I hope that from what we can perceive as nothing that we learn to always find something, and that we realize what must be valued is somehow and
in some way buried deep within that which we otherwise find as meaningless.

These monuments we visit, these empty graveyards, these family dumps found on a salt farm in Maine, remind us not only of the necessity to live but also the way to live. They remind us to not-too-much fill our lives with the pursuit of the material, the vanity of recognition, or the fleeting illusions of power or fame; just  as they caution us away from an empty and forgotten life, the loveless life, the life which abandons and then is later abandoned.   These reminders, when brought into harmony with one another, encourage us down the path of living less inside ourselves and less focused on the objects we build and acquire, while at the same time they encourage us to be more engaged and aware of the people, the creatures and the beauty that was created around us, as we were created to live surrounded by.  So on this beautiful autumn Sunday, I ask you to leave this place, re-enter your world and spin a web of words and acts of kindness–learn more to forgive; spin a web that loves– learn more to love, spin a web that saves a life–give of yourself to the aid of others; spin a web that creates and nurtures a life–relish and nurture your family and friends; and, spin a web that senses all things created outside of us as beautiful and meaningful and so much worthy of living life for.  Love everyone, everything and mostly yourself.

Amen.

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