"For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them who are asleep." 

 First Epistle to the Thessalonians

Little Howard sleeps in a little cemetery north of Skiatook, Oklahoma.

Mount Olivet Cemetery, Frederick, Maryland

This gravestone is the only one I can recall seeing that incorporates an arch. I noticed it the other day driving past Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland. I live about 4 blocks from the entrance of this large boneyard, a veritable city of the dead, which has been open for business since the 1850s. Unlike many older cemeteries, Mt. Olivet still has plenty of burial space available, and is still planting people in the as yet untilled portion of their Elysian fields.

Note the clasping hands with oak leaves at the apex of the arch. This is the grave of Nathan O. and Eliza A. Neighbors. Mr. Neighbors died in 1859, Mrs. Neighbors in 1875. The differential in death dates allows me to infer that in this case, this is a truly heavenly handshake, representing reunion in the afterlife. 

This is not the best picture I ever took, but it shows a style of gravestone from the 18th century. In this example, instead of a death's-head, it has what seems to be an vaguely African face with rather abstract flowing wings, but which looks at a distance like an acorn with big ponytails.

This grave is in a very shady corner (big, big trees) of the Old Stone Church burying ground in Leesburg, Virginia. The church was built in 1766, the first Methodist church in the area, and torn down..um...sometime in the first half of the twentieth century, if memory serves. lts history is detailed on a little kiosk near the entrance of the graveyard, and I found interesting reading at the time...I think it had a mixed race congregation before the Civil War, there was resentment on the part of white folks after the war...but my middle-aged brain does not retain information the way it used to, and I fear to conjure a false narrative from the bits I "remember."

The holy handshake was a popular motif in the 19th century. The handshake seems to be representative of earthly farewell than the prospect of a meet-and-greet at the Pearly Gates. The mind's eye image of a long-haired guy in a white gown with a "Hi, I'm...JESUS!"  sticker on his chest rushing forward with both hands extended is hard for me to shake, though. 

My niece Leann Noguerra has a folksy explanation of the pennies on the Poe monument, which sounds true--even if it never happened, as Elie Wiesel put it:

Cool pic... I have been there... The reason people leave pennies on his grave is because he died without a cent to his name. The city of Baltimore paid for his grave by having every schoolchild in Baltimore donate a penny. To this day, it's customary to leave a penny behind on the marker when visiting his grave.

I did not know of this custom, and did not deposit my penny for Edgar. Seems that I owe Poe one red cent. I will repay next time I'm in Baltimore.

 

I have an unholy interest in gravestones and grave markers, as well as other forms of remembrance of the dead, whether ornately carved stone or homemade roadside memorial. I'm rather fond of cemeteries, too. Burial grounds are generally quiet and uncrowded...by the living. Usually, you can cut the solitude with a knife, and I like my solitude. The dead don't talk. Much. At times, one feels as though one is having a conversation, but those murmurs are simply the voices inside the head. A cemetery is like an outdoor library, with stones to read instead of books. I skim the inscriptions like the text on the spines on books; title, author, publisher, the explicit temptation to take a book from the shelves and open it. You can't open a grave like a book, but you can open your mind to the dead and hear the whispers.

I take lots of pictures of grave and memorial art. I do this for my own delectation, but in these latter days of supra-narcissistic social media, why not share? I am you and you are me and we are all together, and one day, we'll be dead. Memento mori. Ars longa, and all that. Art for the dead is a kind of popular art, and can be folk art, but is also art that lasts--not always, not forever, but a gravestone is generally more sturdy than most contemporary forms of popular art. Conversely, it is an art that is also allowed to decay--out of doors in all weathers. As I have said elsewhere, I think many ruins look better bleached and broken than they did when new and whole. The power to conjure the ages withstood, to ensorcell the imagination as one walks among carved stones, lies in decay. Rock of ages, cleft for me.

Homemade markers weather fast, and that rush to entropy interests me also--and the visible efforts of family and loved one to arrest that entropy, decorating, cleaning, keeping house for the dead. Tokens to conjure, to police the deviations and deceptions of beloved memory.

The inaugural photo of this little blog is the memorial to Edgar Allen Poe in the Westminster Burying Ground in Baltimore. I was playing tour guide to a friend last May and as she is a (published) writer, I took her for a visit. It was blustery day, and the grounds of the dark little church were suitably spooky. For some reason, people leave pennies tipped against the stone. The daily tombstone will not often be that of a dead "celebrity," but the Poe stone is appropo, is it not?