Cemetery
11 Aug 2021Today’s prompt: “Sit for 15 minutes in a tranquil place – the edge of a stream, the courtyard of a church, an empty field – opening all your senses. Write down what you notice.”
The chirping of the birds in the cemetery has an almost aggressive tenor. I saw geese walking along the paths through the graveyard as I drove up, but they are gone now, and it’s hard to tell at this distance what the smaller, squawky birds might be. The sweet smell of mown grass fills the warm air. On my walk through the cemetery to the crypt, I was surprised at how high some of the thistles had grown between gravestones. Most of them were mown down and occasionally scratched at my sandaled toes, but a few of the larger ones snapped at my ankles and calves.
The steps of the crypt are wide. Even though there’s a few spots of bird shit on them, there’s plenty of room for me to sit in a clean-looking spot. I’m calling it a crypt, but I guess crypts are more an underground burial chamber thing. What do they call the thing in a graveyard that looks like a small house, then? Are those always the entrances to crypts? I have no idea. I’m going to keep calling it a crypt.
The crypt has cylindrical columns holding up the concrete awning over the top step, and square columns at the four corners around the crypt. There are empty bases for two more columns in front of the cylindrical columns, but there’s nothing there, as though someone started building columns before deciding, nah, I’m done with this crypt. The crypt’s brass-looking doors are ornately molded with wreath designs and crucifixes among leaf and flower motifs. Holes in the door jamb and lintel make it look as though bars were over the crypt doors at one point. Perhaps security has gotten more lax.
I can hear the hum of traffic, but it feels far away. It’s just me, the trees, the birds, the flies, the tombstone, and the crypt. The geese come back, announcing their arrival with trumpets.
Large numbers spell out “1909” at the top of the crypt, and below that, under a sort of concrete overhang, letters spell out “Green.” 1909. Green. That’s all I know about the occupant. Or occupants. Presumably they’re related to John Green, Medal of Honor recipient, Brigadier General in the U.S. Army during the Indian Wars, born 1829, deceased 1908, whose grave marker is just outside the crypt. At first it looks like he’s been exiled from the other Greens in the crypt, perhaps for his involvement in the Indian Wars, who knows, until you remember he died a year before this crypt was built.
There’s no indication of who is in the crypt, or how many. Just the last name Green and the year 1909. No birth dates, no first names. The anonymous Green, or Greens.
There’s a surprising anonymity to many of the gravestones here, actually. For many of them, while they contain names and birth and death dates, the title of Father or Mother is listed first on the stone, sometimes in noticeably larger font. There’s even stones for people without names. Baby Bradley, May 28, 1910. One grave surprised me by just having the word “Corn” on one side of the tombstone. Sure, when I moved around to the other side, it appears to be for an M. W. Corn and an E. C. Corn, with birth and death dates, but there’s something intriguing about the idea that a simple last name that one shares with a vegetable would be sufficient as a marker. R.I.P., Corn.
On the other end of the spectrum, some tombstones incorporate photo portraits of the interred. Black and white on the older stones; color for the more recent ones.
Most of the graves in this part of the cemetery date back to the early to mid 20th century, but there are a few modern ones. I saw two from 2019. One is for Briana Marie Martinez, who died just before turning 20. “Too beautiful for earth so she became an Angel,” one side of her grave proclaims. The other says, “Rest Easy Breezy” and is followed by a poem. Her tombstone is decked out with beads, a crucifix, and a planter of flowers. The other grave I saw from 2019 is for Cathleen Dawnn Rosera, June 1956 - February 2019. Her tombstone has a picture of two angels below her name and birth and death dates. Bafflingly, between the angels are the words, “Oh well,” in quotes.
I honestly didn’t think I would ever see anything like that again until I saw your tombstone, which has your name, followed by a shruggy. ¯\(ツ)/¯