The Architecture of Eternity
Ancient burial grounds have turned up artifacts of history, skeletons of pre-historic men and monuments erected to those civilizations. The pyramids, after all, (not to mention the Sphinx) weren’t just built for fun. Burying our dead has been an act of ritual and a demonstration of culture since people first, well, died.
And, of course, gravestones, graveyards, catacombs, mausoleums and memorials leave behind the best of what these people had to offer, what was important to them and what technology they had at the time. Why wear your favorite dress or bring a whole set of jewelry unless it was important or you thought you needed it later?
And why erect a beautiful monument unless someone else was going to see it?
The ancient tombs of China and Greece were the most beautiful, sophisticated designs of their time.
Why save anything for after the end?
Though the designs have changed throughout history, their importance hasn’t.
We can now use past gravestone designs to infer ideas about that society. Though, of course, we could be completely wrong.
What if someone 200 years in the future tried to judge current American society based on the contents in your bedroom? Or the design you picked for your gravestone?
It’s likely, unless you’re a little morbid, you haven’t yet thought about your headstone or plot design. Our society has moved away from a fixation on the afterlife and fire and brimstone. (We do, after all, live longer than the Puritans.)
Now, tombstone designs that are personal or significant to the individual are popular. In Los Angeles, a woman erected her head stone with a fireplace designed on it and sculptures of two couches next to it. Apparently, she never wanted to leave her living room.
In Ohio, a plumber, who knew he had a terminal disease, had two parking meters that he had accidentally knocked over, erected next to his gravestone. The parking meters now read ‘EXPIRED’.
Not everyone views death so lightly. Large, white and marble is still the most prevalent of graveyard designs, though those things may not be common in any towns where I’m from. People tend towards the more traditional in their post-life wishes. Maybe, deep down, we’re all a little worried about the big guy upstairs.
Or maybe the littler guys down here.
After all, tourists aren’t going to visit your coffin, take pictures of your headstone or immortalize your epithet. Probably. But, for the famous what they leave behind will be there for all eternity.
Sometimes the famous try to go for the (semi-) literal, as with Karen Carpenter, half of the singing duo the Carpenters, who chose the epithet:
A star on earth – a star in heaven.
James Dean was killed in a car accident and, at such a young age, probably hadn’t had time to fully transcribe his final will and testament. Yet, the closest restaurant to the crash site has erected a monument of solver and metal. The restaurant sells more souvenirs than food. Sometimes we don’t get to decide how society remembers us.
But you can decide to make trips to visit those celebrities who did leave gravesites behind. Websites like Morbid Curiosity or Find A Grave have directories of celebrity graves and famous gravestones (though maybe not famous people) throughout the country.
People, some people, even go on tours of famous graveyards.
While the most famous within these borders may be Arlington National Cemetery, with its white rows of marble and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the most full of famous people is the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, which has maps of stars graves and even plays old films on the lawn during the summer, and the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park, home of Natalie Wood, Jack Lemmon and Rodney Dangerfield, who’s epitaph reads:
There goes the neighborhood.
In San Francisco, the neighborhood can consist of birds and dogs. The Pet Cemetery in the Presidio, under the Golden Gate Bridge, is surrounded by a white picket fence, shaded with dozens of trees and home to odd and home-made markers for decades of fondly remembered pets.
While the Pet Cemetery is cute and charming, it is easier to believe in ghost stories and haunting amid some of the older, ramshackled graveyards of New England.
The Old Granary Burial Ground, in Boston, is one of the oldest and most over-crowded cemeteries in America’s rather short history. It is home to Paul Revere, John Hancock and Sam Adams and gets 3000 visitors a day.
But the most famous ghost of this town? The lady in black.
The story goes that the lady in black snuck into Fort Warren, which is on George’s Island off the coast, to rescue her husband, a Confederate soldier. But when she fired at the guard, as they escaped, the gun backfired and killed her husband. She was caught, tried and hung as traitor in a long black robe. And she still haunts the island in that robe to this day.
The lady got no gravestone or burial design. She didn’t get to choose how she was remembered, but she is remembered nonetheless.
Perhaps, no matter the design, we are known but to God, as the Unknown Soldier’s tomb reads.
>Written by d/visible contributor Kelly Dunleavy.
