Cemeteries Are Not So Depressing

What is depressing is watching a Thanksgiving Day parade in the rain. Like the one that happened in Philadelphia this year, 2024, and in NYC, to the multi-million-dollar Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade – Jimmy Fallon’s big smile notwithstanding. I wasn’t even there, I was just watching on television. Depressing watching those people trying to have a good time. I’ve had more fun attending funerals in the rain. 

It's easy for me, a cemetery creeper, to say that, if you’re depressed, go visit a cemetery! Sometimes the world is too much world us, as Wordsworth wrote. Whether it’s during a busy day at work or I’m sitting in my car in the supermarket parking lot watching rats running under a dumpster, I sometimes long to get away – to a cemetery. Quiet and ratless solitude. 

I’ve long felt that there is beauty in the forgotten world of these memory gardens. The absence of distraction allows me to focus, sometimes on nothing in particular. I have fleeting memories of live people whom I’ve met over the years, but I can remember exactly where I made a particular cemetery photograph twenty years ago. I also know that most of my cemetery visits have been fun, and all have been therapeutic. They can be a cushion against the outside world. And those cemetery fences...? 

Originally meant to keep the thoughts of the dead away from those of the living, one can also interpret cemetery fences as demarcations, boundaries of a memory world in which hope and solace reside. Cemeteries can sometimes be more than a cushion for us to relax on, they can be a trampoline for our emotions, our creativity – maybe even our sanity. A private place that most people avoid - in our midst but a world away.

Victoria Wyeth, in her Halloween, 2024, lecture on her family’s artwork (virtual gallery talk sponsored by the Brandywine River Museum in Chaddsford, PA), said that after her grandfather Andrew Wyeth died, she was depressed for months. It was only after her Uncle Jamie flew her to Maine to picnic at her grandfather’s grave, did she experience the calm joy of being in a cemetery.

Victoria and her Uncle Andy (who died in 2009) had been very close, she being his only grandchild. A few months after his death, Jamie Wyeth flew her to Maine where he and Victoria’s Dad took her to the cemetery where Andy was buried. They had a picnic. She said they “turned the cemetery into something that’s not scary.”  Now, whenever she’s sad or something cool happens, she visits the cemetery and talks with her grandfather. She loves that her Dad and Uncle took a situation like that, brought her to a cemetery and made it normal. She went on to say that this interaction with cemeteries is really important, something people tend to avoid.

I used to think that visiting and volunteering to do work in cemeteries was all about respect – respect for the past, and ultimately, respect for ourselves. I now think that respect ties in deeply with memory. Cemeteries are full of memories - maybe not ours, but we can still appreciate them. I volunteer at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Philadelphia. I’ve witnessed people visiting from a thousand miles away, scooting in a motorized wheelchair up a sidewalk cleared by the Friends of Mount Moriah Cemetery, Inc., to visit a grandparent who had died forty years earlier. Witnessing other people’s experience with memory can create a profound impression, a not depressing memory.

When I wrote my new book, Abandoned Cemeteries of Philadelphia and its Environs (due out in 2025 on Fonthill Media), I mention a quote by my friend Ross Mitchell, who at the time I interviewed him in 2006, was the Executive Director of Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia. I was speaking with him about ways in which an historic cemetery can stay in business (because that’s what cemeteries are, businesses - when they’re full, and can have no new burials, there is no income). 

Laurel Hill, like many cemeteries, hosts events. Sometimes admission is charged, usually donations are requested. Laurel Hill has hosted rock concerts, movie nights, historic tours, running events, classic hearse shows - all to engage the community and create positive memories for the attendees. Such events raise money for the upkeep of the grounds. I asked Ross how he came to terms with people thinking that fund-raising events in a cemetery was disrespectful, an impingement on peoples’ memories. He said: 

“People really need to come here and see Laurel Hill for themselves. They need to overcome their inhibition of ‘why would I want to visit a cemetery’ and realize that not all cemeteries are very depressing places. In fact I think this one is really a celebration of life. And you talk about, well, isn’t it disrespectful? If you look at the monuments and the sculpture in Laurel Hill you know these people wanted these monuments to be seen.”

There are many reasons to visit a cemetery, you don’t need to be visiting someone who died. There is history, art, architecture - and everything in a cemetery changes with the seasons of the year; things look different whenever you visit. You will witness the embodiment of other peoples’ memories and will come away with your own. While its true that during a brief visit we only get a fleeting glimpse of other peoples’ lives, but this can be enough. 

My friend George Hofmann, in his article, Bipolar Disorder and Memory writes about his memory as he gets older (George actually works in a cemetery) - “Instead of some deep resonance I’m lost in wavering impressions. Impressions can be beautiful. Beauty comes more readily in a forgotten world.” 

In the same article, Hofmann mentions a line from the movie, Nomadland, in which the central character states, “What’s remembered lives.” I have all good memories of cemeteries, even the one where I attended the burial of a friend’s nine-year-old son. Although that day was traumatic, the memory was modified years later, when the Dad took over the care of this cemetery - the prior owner could no longer manage it. So this Thanksgiving season, there are things to be thankful for, like memories. And come to think of it, I’ll bet all those people standing in the rain at this year’s Thanksgiving Day parades came away with good memories.

The last question Victoria Wyeth asked her grandfather before he died, was about how to create the color black. He said that he didn’t start by squeezing inky paint from a tube. “You build in the excitement before adding black, you slowly build it up with blues and reds and greens.” So let’s all make sure that when our screens go black, our lives will remain a colorful memory for those we leave behind - full of blues and reds and greens. When they visit your grave, let them leave with a smile - even if they don't know who you are.

REFERENCES:

Why The Cemetery Is a Celebration of Life:

https://www.stoneangels.net/ross-mitchell-part-8-visiting-laurel-hill-why-the-cemetery-is-a-celebration-of-life/

Virtual Gallery Talk with Victoria Wyeth: Halloween Edition 2024:

https://www.brandywine.org/museum/events/virtual-gallery-talk-victoria-wyeth-halloween-edition-2024-0

America’s First Family of Art:

https://pinestrawmag.com/americas-first-family-of-art/

Atlantic City Cemetery

Its summer, and everyone goes to the shore. At least that’s what those of us on the east coast typically do. And Atlantic City, New Jersey is one of the popular destinations. What people don’t realize until they visit AC is that it isn’t all beaches and glitzy casinos – that’s just the actual boardwalk area. The rest of the city is really just a shanty town, like Hollywood, California. Kind of run down, with cheesy bars, pawn shops, and cheap motels. Just like me to go for the seamy underside of things, isn't it?

And speaking of Hollywood, the first time I was there, I was walking near Hollywood and Vine when I heard a man calling out, "Ten ninety-five! Fresh cut today!" I turned the corner to see him standing there selling mechanical severed hands that were slowly crawling around the sidewalk! But I digress.

 

Casino-intensive beach area of Atlantic City, NJ (ref.)



Atlantic City is like any other large town - its got laundromats, supermarkets, and ...cemeteries. People certainly don’t associate this beach resort with cemeteries, but such things are a part of life, right? Though you won't find it listed in the tour guide, a two hundred year old city (est. 1854), must have one. Established in 1865, its respectable Victorian-era, non-sectarian cemetery is rather off the beaten path. It’s actually on the mainland (AC itself is on Absecon Island), outside the main city area - in Pleasantville, NJ, to be specific (see map). The two-block long by two-block wide cemetery is nestled between the AC Expressway and the Black Horse Pike (Route 40). I was there back in 2005 and it is definitely worth a visit.

Though I didn't realize it at the time, this short visit to the AC Cemetery provided me with several jumping-off spots for what became related interests of mine – voodoo dolls, mausoleum stained glass, and fraternal organizations in cemeteries. Perhaps it was this Ganesh I came across which removed certain artistic obstacles for me, took the blinders from my eyes, as it were.

Jersey cemeteries - maybe not oddly -  are the only places I’ve ever personally seen dolls, dead chickens, candles, and other ritualistic voodoo-type accouterments. So here's a photo of the doll I came across in the AC Cemetery. You can't see it up close, but the fabric is printed with moons and stars. People do tend jump to the worst conclusion when they see such things, which is not necessarily warranted. We fear what we don’t understand. And I for one, didn’t understand the severed hands sticking up all over the cemetery (top photo). They freaked me out.

 

A ritual evocation of the Voodoo gods and spirits of the dead can be for good purposes as well as for evil. We’re just used to what we see on television, when we really know nothing about any of the various African-derived religions like Santeria and Vodun. However, with Western culture based heavily on movies and television (used to be the other way around), it’s easy to see how peoples’ imaginations can run wild.

It amuses me to see people’s reactions to such things. As I was walking through a cemetery in Camden, NJ back around 1997, I saw a dead chicken on a grave and mentioned this idly to my fifteen-year-old daughter as we walked by. She thought I was joking and physically JUMPED back when she actually saw it! If you search the Web for “Voodoo dolls in cemetery,” you’ll find lots of sensationalistic accounts. Headlines like, "Scouts Find Voodoo Dolls at St. Petersburg Cemetery" are sure to sell papers. This particular one in fact, is quite amusing:

"They looked nothing like dolls," said Bryan McDonough, 12. "They were kind of like ugly creatures that would eat you alive," added his 10-year-old brother, Kevin, a Webelos Cub Scout. - St. Petersburg Times, 2008

Even better than newspaper headlines are the dramatic-to-the-point-of-ridiculous television news stories, like this one from ABC, “Voodoo Dolls Found at Gravesite,” an account of jars of voodoo items found buried under a guy’s headstone in Houston, Texas.

Another item of interest I found and photographed in Atlantic City Cemetery is this broken stained glass window. The place has a smattering of mausoleums on one side. Up to that point in time, I’d never given mausoleums in general much notice. I knew they had stained glass windows and ornate metal doors, but I saw nothing photo-worthy in them. Call it a flaw in my personality. Enter the Ganesh. I guess what drew me to this particular structure was the unusual fact that the stained glass window was on the FRONT of the building, rather than the back, and its glass was smashed, its leading mangled. I guess I’m drawn to the forlorn and damaged more so than to the pretty and preserved. This came to be the beginning of my interest in stained glass mausoleum windows (many of which you can see in my "Mausoleum Stained Glass" album on my Facebook site, Ed Snyder’s StoneAngels Photography). I even wrote a blog about Photographing Mausoleum Stained Glass back in March, 2011.

Oh and the severed hands sticking up all over the cemetery? I found one that still had the Odd Fellows symbol on it - the interlocking rings at the fingertips with the letters "FLT." Mystery solved. I didn't know what it meant at the time, but I later looked it up, which is one of the most interesting things about Cemetery Travel - unravelling these little mysteries that confront you. "FLT" stands for Friendship, Love, and Truth, one of the symbols used by the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, a benevolent and social society (fraternal organization) which had its origin in England in the 1700s. The local lodge number is written on the palm in this photo.

So for me, the hour-long stopover at Atlantic City Cemetery with my ex-girlfriend was productive, informative, and inspiring. We later went surfing. Feels weird to have written that now, years later, as my two-year-old daughter falls asleep in my arms. Memory surely is not a simple recollection of the facts, is it now? Noted author Brillat-Savarin (see his book below, The Physiology of Taste, 1825) believed that one’s personal experience becomes wrapped up in, and affects how one remembers certain "facts." Remembering is, in part, reliving the situation. Its more than just, "Here's a picture of a voodoo doll I once found." A seemingly short visit to a cemetery can remind you of who you were, and help you to see your present life more clearly.

 For Further Reading: