Nana’s Ashes

A number of secrets were buried with my Lithuanian grandmother, Leona Snyder, in 2000. She spent the last five of her ninety-two years  in a nursing home, the final two with dementia. Late in the game, she made hardly any sense—to me, anyway. She would be loving toward see my children one minute, then not remember their names the next. It was heartbreaking to see her degradation from the six-foot matriarchal battleaxe and stalwart of our highly dysfunctional family. That's her at the picnic table, sitting on the left, and me sitting second from right, circa 1963. Not sure what the noose was all about...

Once while visiting her, her youngest sister (then in her sixties) was present. “Nana,” as we called my grandmother, went off on some ridiculous tangent about THEIR sister not leaving them a penny when she died, having accumulated “a chain of whorehouses that the state got hold of.” Both her sister and I nodded in agreement until Nana fell asleep. Out in the hallway, I lamented to my great aunt about how difficult it is for me to see my grandmother this way, just rambling incoherently. She said, “What do you mean? You didn’t know about any of that?” Their heretofore unmentioned entrepreneurial sister ran a business that serviced Northeast Pennsylvania coal miners in back in the day. I have every reason to believe that Nana is living as colorful an afterlife as she did in her physical life!

When she died, it was decided to bury her ashes at her parents’ gravesite. My family has cremated most of its kin, for reasons of economy, they’ve said. In retrospect and since they all hated funerals as much as I do, I suspect the real reason is because they cannot bear to see their relation in a coffin surrounded by flowers. Many folks just don’t like long goodbyes. Seeing their loved one die gave them all the sense of closure they needed. Disposal of the body was a simple housekeeping task.

I don’t even know where the cremation was done (some details we just block out, you know?). I do remember, however, my parents asking me to bury the ashes. My first thought was to do this in some romantic fashion, such as scattering them across several farmers’ fields where she had us, as children, steal corn. She’d pull the car over to the side of the road and throw a bag at us: “Fill this up—they’ll never miss it!” However, the family thought it fitting to bury her ashes at her parents’ grave.  Now this isn’t as “normal” as it may sound. Her parents’ grave stone had been originally stolen by her two brothers, a nice red marble "model" lifted from a monument dealer's display. They took it to a different stone carver to have it engraved.

Photo by Tim Snyder

In addition, the intent was to not notify the owners of that little rural cemetery (shown above) that we were burying her ashes here. While its okay to scatter someone’s ashes to the four winds, you’re not supposed to just dig a hole on someone’s private property and bury them! Cemeteries make their money by SELLING you a burial spot, charging you to dig the hole, provide you with a fancy urn for the cremains, etc.That's how they make their money to stay in business.

Doing this illegally just runs in my family’s blood, I guess. As much as I enjoyed them all, they were either criminals, liars, or drunks, and sometimes all three--actual descendants of Molly Maguires gone awry. Once when paying a surprise visit to Nana’s brother, “Uncle Joe,” in Maryland, we found his house burned and boarded up. At about fourteen, I remember walking into the Glen Burnie police station with her as she went up to the officer at the front desk and said (and I’m sure she had no idea of his rank), “Sergeant, we’re looking for Joseph Wilkes.” Without even looking up from his paperwork, he replied, “Who ISN’T, lady?” We slunk out of there.

So one Spring day, three carloads of us drove out to the hillside cemetery where Nana's parents were buried. Not much going on, it being a weekend and the quarry down the road was closed. No houses for a quarter mile in any direction. We were all uncomfortably polite to each other—my parents (that's me between them in the photo below), an aunt with her daughter and child, my brother (not in the photo--he took the picture), and my cousin Albert (far right). You know how you begin to feel twelve years old again after spending a half-hour with your parents? Not this time; I was 42 years old and felt strangely adult.  Nana was there too—her ashes, that is, in a plastic bag.



Photo by Tim Snyder

Albert and I found ourselves in front of the family headstone, shovel in hand. Time settles down and concentrates on the moment, as writer Salman Rushdie would say. Albert and I hadn’t seen each other in twenty years, but we had been almost inseparable as kids. We shared many formative experiences, mainly during weekends and summers spent at Nana’s. I dug an adequate hole and Albert and I opened the bag. Over some nervously light banter, we began pouring the ashes into the hole. As the wind began to kick up and ashes took flight, I looked at him and asked with a grin, "You ever see ‘The Big Lebowski?” thinking of the scene where John Goodman empties a coffee can of Donny’s ashes off a Pacific coastal cliff and the wind blows them into Jeff Bridges’ face. Albert snickered and said, “Yeah…”

No member of my family ever won an award for subtlety. Remember “The Loud Family” from the late 1970’s Saturday Night Live? Where everybody yelled? You know my people then. You could never be certain what they said was true, but they more than made up for it in volume. That said, as our little caravan of cars left the cemetery, my cousin Albert pulled an M-80* out of his shirt pocket, lit it, and threw it out the window! WTF! As the goddamn thing exploded in the woods, we heard invisible horses frantically neighing, as if someone had just uttered “FRAU BLUCHER!”  (from Mel Brooks' movie Young Frankenstein). As the main road behind the quarry came into view, we saw two horses reared up on their hind legs with their riders holding on for dear life! As the horses with their helpless riders galloped down the dirt road like twin bats out of hell, I realized that grieving is a very individual thing—and Albert was grieving in his own special way. It was the perfect denouement to my grandmother’s complex life, and a fitting tribute.

Some Notes and Links you may find amusing:

“FRAU BLUCHER!” video

*An M-80 is a large firecracker, illegal in the U.S. due to its great explosive power (approximately equal to 1/20 stick of dynamite).

Some years later, we buried my father’s ashes in the same spot, with somewhat less fanfare. You can read about it here.

I would have loved to link you to an episode of SNL’s “The Loud Family,” but can’t find anything on the Web. If anyone can locate one, please let me know! Here’s a link to a transcript of an episode, anyway.

Molly Maguires

Museum of Mourning Art

While there are a few "Death" museums in the U.S., the one in Drexel Hill's Arlington Cemetery (western Philadelphia suburb) is one of the few that does not cater to sensationalism and grislyness. Officially named "Museum of Mourning Art," this small museum presents a well-executed (pun intended) collection of funereal artifacts mainly from the Victorian Era (mid to late 1800s). This was the period in which funerary art was most popular and widespread in Western cultures. All artforms were affected, from sculpture, painting, and clothing to cemetery architecture, landscaping, and design. Garden cemeteries came into being with their extravagent monumentation and people wore jewely made from hair of the deceased. In other words, we were much more at ease with death than we are now (possibly because it was so much more prevalent and people just had to get used to it!).

At this point, I have no idea how in 2005 I stumbled upon the Museum of Mourning Art--word of mouth, probably. Unless you travel in these circles, how would you know? That's why you need me to dig these things up for you! The museum is located in the town of Drexel Hill, PA., in Arlington Cemetery. I've placed a link to their website at the end of this blog.

The cemetery itself is a rather pleasant suburban one, with no ornamentation or statuary to speak of. The only thing unusual about it is the structure within the grounds that houses the funeral home, offices, and museum--its a replica of Mount Vernon - George Washington's Virginia home. It seems the owners are GW fans! They even have a lock of his hair under glass in the museum!

The museum is devoted to the representation of grief in American and European culture. The docent is happy to show you around, or you can wander among the arifacts yourself (but please call first to make an appointment: 610-259-5800). Earlier I suggested that the proprietors seem to have avoided the shocking and sensational items other death museums revel in, but if you've never seen a life-sized horse-drawn funeral hearse or a cemetery gun, these bona fide historical artifacts can be quite shocking! The museum displays such commonplace Victorian items as original full-color lithographic funeral invitations, an instruction book on how to get into heaven, and the largest collection of funerary jewely I've ever seen! In fact, the first time I went there, the docent had the book for sale that you see here, "Mourning Arts Jewelry" (DeLorme, 2004 Schiffer Art Books). Have a look for a slice of life you may not have known existed here in the U.S. 150 years ago!

Now, I mentioned a "cemetery gun," a device with which you may be unfamiliar. Its purpose was to deter (and destroy) grave robbers! At nightfall when the average law-abiding citizen was not expected to venture onto the grounds, the gun was rigged to a trip wire at the cemetery entrance. A nefarious intruder would theoretically trip the wire by walking into the cemetery, and be shot by the gun. This isn't necessarily Burke and Hare Victorian folklore (notorious Scottish graverobbers/murderers) -- we really did have our own celebrated grave robbing in Philadelphia!

In the 1880s, Washington Square Park (Sixth and Walnut Streets) was a Potter's Field (a burial place for unknown or indigent people). Its quite possible the Quakers who patrolled the graveyard by night to deter tomb raiders may have set up cemetery guns as well. When they could evade the patrols and other deterrents, the body snatchers would dig up fresh cadavers and sell them to the Anatomy Department at Jefferson Medical College down the street (now part of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where I work). At the time, this was the only way for medical students to learn the insides of the human body. Though the clandestine practice was common in Western society, it was after all, illegal. Jefferson's involvement was monumental in the advance of medical practice because it spawned the Anatomy Act of 1883. In 1882, Dr. William S. Forbes, chairman of Jefferson's Anatomy Department, was arrested for complicity in the crime of grave robbing. Like the artist Thomas Eakins who risked his career and reputation for principles regarding the importance of anatomy in art education, Forbes, too, suffered public humiliation in achieving his goal of legalizing anatomical dissection in medical education.

The Anatomy Act promoted medical education "by the distribution and use of unclaimed human bodies for scientific purposes through a board created for that purpose and to prevent unauthorized uses and traffic in human bodies." The Pennsylvania law stopped the practice of body snatching and served as a model for other states which adopted similar legislation.

But I digress. Not only will you see one of these automated cemetery rifles at Arlington Cemetery's Museum of Mourning Art, but you'll see mannequins draped in mourning clothes, and a wooden coffin with a face window (so viewers can see if the deceased is breathing by fogging of the glass!). Death symbolism is studied and it was here at the museum I learned that the common cherub representation on modern tombstones evolved from the skull and crossbones! Evidence that the concept of death became socially less terrifying in the Victorian era than it was in prior times. (Click here to read more on the topic of this symbolism at my StoneAngels site.) So be prepared to learn if you go to the Museum of Mourning Art! While it may be shocking at first, you'll more likely be fascinated and leave with a greater appreciation of mortality and how it was viewed by our ancestors!

For more info on the Museum of Mourning Art, please see Arlington Cemetery's site. They even have a Facebook presence!

On the other hand, if Pet Death Taxidermy and Human Execution Devices are more up your alley, then the Museum of Death in Hollywood, CA might be what you seek. Or, if Civil War embalming techniques and Fantasy Coffins interest you, then the site for the National Museum of Funeral History (in Texas) might be worth a visit!