I’ve always liked cemeteries. Admittedly, they may not be ecologically-sustainable enough for the coming centuries of growing population and shrinking landmasses, but the cemeteries we do have provide a snapshot of history that we do well to bear in mind. As largely-green open spaces, they can provide the spiritual nourishment of a city park, except with the watchful eyes of the past looking over our shoulders.
Cemeteries reveal the cultures that made them. They reveal what those cultures value, what histories they want to write, what they want to remember. The Forest Home Cemetery near where I grew up was the resting spot for the remains of Chicago’s undesireds in the late 19th century, including Druids, Roma, the Haymarket massacre victims, and even Emma Goldman – people who today are more esteemed than the relative nobodies who made it into the “good” cemeteries downtown.
And so it comes as little surprise that similar historical reconsiderations are happening in Portland, surrounding the Lone Fir Cemetery that sits half a block away from a house I lived in and is where our cat got lost for one fretful night.
Street Roots exposes the conversation in swing about the ways burial plots have been treated – namely, the way the burial sites of persons suffering mental illness were paved over and the way today’s mental health advocates are campaigning for a memorial for those buried there. Lone Fir was the final resting place for the bodies of both Chinese workers and inhabitants of the local “Insane Hospital,” both of which were buried separately from the higher status individuals of pioneer families.
What is the concept behind distinct burial areas, dependent on social status? Is the concern that people’s souls will mingle if their corpses are too close together – and that’s a bad thing? Or are the bereaved worried that they will have to mourn their beloved next to persons unlike themselves, people “like them?”
Or does the city simply not want to remember everyone equally? We write our histories not only in books, but in the very spaces we create as cities and neighborhoods and congregations. May we strengthen ourselves for the tough work of community-building, in body, in spirit, and in memory.
Emily McGaughy said,
December 9, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Wonderful post Auds. These questions you raise, questions of cultural & space construction, memory and honor, strike me with force. If we “remember everyone equally” then we might have to remember our complicity in making people “insane,” our willingness to bury people or lock people away before they die. Our construction of “space” (cities, neighborhoods and congregations) illuminates the fruit of certain hearts. A checking out of U.S. space/infrastructure to date reveals that certain persons, workers, creatures and communities get “put” away while others get exalted. As you’ve aptly pointed out here, our death ceremonies and burial choices are no exception. Thank you for bringing my attention to this issue. It’s so easy to focus on birth these days…
Brethren Priestess said,
December 10, 2008 at 12:07 am
Hey there, dear Emily;
You raise some great points, and take a few more steps I hadn’t gotten to! Yes, the spirit of BIRTH is thick in the air, and, as is typical of our culture, we’re much more comfortable talking about the naturalness of birth but never death.
Cemeteries are then the place where the unfairness of our society as charted in space meet our culture’s ambivalent relationship with death.
You and I could write a great essay about this together, huh?
Miss you!