cemeteries

Tombstone tourist / taphophile

As a tombstone tourist or taphophile, I enjoy visiting graveyards for the following seven reasons:

1)     Take a relaxing walk in a contemplative environment while enjoying the open-air sculpture park

2)     Learn about the history and culture of the local people, and how their culture has changed with time

3)     Appreciate local artisans’ distinct styles (e.g., tall and narrow sandstone headstones topped with iron crosses at Cementerio de Barichara in Barichara, Colombia)

4)     Enjoy the faded elegance, with nature reclaiming artifice

5)     Unexpectedly find ornate historic graves in modest towns (e.g., Cementerio General in San Miguel, El Salvador)

6)     Unexpectedly find historic graves that contemporary visitors have creatively decorated

7)     Visit with the cemetery cats (some graveyard caretakers feed them)

Observations

1)     High quality, detailed marble figures are more interesting than huge, boring concrete mausoleums.

2)     Successful graveyards are filled with plants, including shade trees.  Concrete jungles consisting of homogenous rows of large tombs and no plants are depressing.

3)     Elaborate graves may take several years to finish after the person’s death.  Most of the best marble sculptures were carved in Italy before being imported to the Americas.

Guidelines for designing graves

1)     After a few years, no one cares about the month and day the person was born and died.  Including this information on the tombstone indicates that the person commissioning it had nothing better to write.

2)     The dried bones of a person, which is all that is left after several years, weigh perhaps 10 pounds (< 5 kilograms) and can fit into a modest box.  How big of a tomb is appropriate to put on top of these modest remains?

3)     Distinguish between materials, designs, and subjects that are timeless from those that are current fads (e.g., log-shaped concrete forms, chrome figures).

4)     Once-fancy graveyards often fall into disrepair, are located in lower-income parts of town, and homeless people sleep there.  Does the graveyard have a secure endowment to pay for caretakers long-term?  Pick the graveyard and design the grave with these factors in mind.

5)     In a few generations no one will care about you.  Your descendants will eventually move or die out, no longer being buried with you.  So discard your pride and desire for a large monument.  Instead, leave a durable artwork as a beautiful, final gesture to share with living cemetery strollers 100+ years hence.

6)     Consider making your statue Instagrammable so people will interact with it.  For example, design a statue with a cupped hand so that people may place flowers in it or a statue that is only complete when a person stands next to it.

What works on graves

1)     Photo or engraving of the person during their prime, not when they were already old and frail

2)     Ceramic sepia photos of the person last 100+ years, even in full sun

3)     Quotes, preferably by the person

4)     Describe and express how the person was different (e.g., achievements, ethnic minority, immigrant, profession); there is too much conformity in graveyards (e.g., white concrete crosses)

5)     Deeply-cut-into-stone letters highlighted with gold leaf

6)     Glass mosaic tiles, particularly with gold-leaf highlights

7)     Polished marble stone.  Rough-finish marble blackens over time because of microbial growth.

8)     Large, solid, heavy pieces of stone that gravity reinforces instead of assemblages of smaller pieces that have numerous seams where plants destructively take root and erosion occurs

9)     Substantial space for plants to grow at ground-level (not on raised platform, which can crack, in which the soil can dry out too quickly, killing the plants) alongside the grave as dwarf hedge or dwarf trees

10)    Slow-growing, creeping plants that do not need watering (e.g., ice plants)

11)    Glazed terracotta weathers well, but does not survive blunt physical damage.

12)    Industrial-quality mausoleum gates that allow ventilation, with heavy duty locks, rather than solid doors

What does not work on graves

1)     Concrete cracks, plaster over brick erodes

2)     Screwed- or pounded-in metal letters, which can be pried off and sold as scrap metal

3)     Stained glass, unless entire pieces of glass are both thick and stained (not just painted)

4)     Statues that have heavy, delicate appendages (e.g., large angel wings with long, tapered tips, even when made of marble)

5)     Horizontal slabs of both concrete and stone may eventually crack if they are only supported along their margins

6)     Flat, horizontal surfaces where puddles can form, freeze-thaw cycles erode, and mosquitoes breed

7)     Flower vases, which crack, hold water for mosquitoes to breed, and eventually look sad because they are empty or just contain florists’ foam without flowers

8)     Mausoleum doors made of wood or double-paned glass (eventually the sealant leaks out and humidity accumulates inside)

9)     Up or down stairs in mausoleums, which are never used and accumulate detritus

10)    Heavy bronze plaques that are reachable by a standing person are likely to get stolen by thieves using crowbars and sold for scrap metal unless the graveyard has security guards.  By contrast, marble plaques remain in place, even in looted graveyards.

11)    There will always be someone who will build a bigger obelisk than yours.

Outstanding cemeteries I have visited on this trip

1)     General Cemetery of Guayaquil, Guayaquil, Ecuador

2)     Cementerio Presbítero Matías Maestro, Lima, Peru

3)     The Illustrious Cemetery, San Salvador, El Salvador

4)     San Juan Bautista Cemetery, Corrientes, Argentina

Reasons not to make a mausoleum

The three reasons shown are from the North Cemetery in San Miguel de Tucuman, Argentina, where most of the bronze plaques that are common on Argentinian mausoleums have also been stolen.  But I have seen similar sights at many other cemeteries wherein old, emptied mausoleums are used for storage by groundskeepers.  Issues beyond looting and re-purposing mausoleums include mold, windows breaking, detritus collecting, crumbling concrete, and collapsed shelving holding caskets.

The earth has fed me for half a century; I owe the earth a body.  The debt will be paid.

-- Edward Abbey, Down the River