Nothing's Happening: February 2011

Today I got to go to Laurel Hill Cemetary's "Till Death Do Us Part," Valentine's Day tour. I'm writing an article for Campus Philly about the event, which will be published this coming Thursday. But, I also wanted to share my personal experience at the cemetary. I got there early and took a few hours to walk around the historic site.

I took a few pictures, but am nowhere near the level of photographer to even come close to capturing the place- if anyone could. And, my camera battery died. I know, some journalist, huh? I beat myself up about that lack of preparation, but then I realized that I'm more of a writer than a photographer anyway. My camera may have failed, but my pen was working just fine. If a picture is worth a thousand words, I could write volumns about this place and still not capture the feeling of being here. What I discovered is that you don't explore Laurel Hill, you experience it. The following is my "picture" of Laurel Hill:

I'm sitting on a small set of slate steps at the western edge of the cemetary. Down the embankment to my right is Kelly Drive, winding it's way along the Schulkyll River. Across the river, slightly obscured by trees I can see Route 76 and the cars rushing along, into or out of the city. Walking along the path here is like stradling two worlds. The people in those cars are so caught up in living: going to work, coming home, talking, eating, tuning their radios, GPS, I-Pod, Bluetooth, McDonald's, billboards, toll booths, worries, hopes, stress. None of that matters here though.

In fact, many of the 100,000 plus people whose final resting place looks out over this living world didn't even have electricity or running water, let alone telephones, cars, etc. And, they certainly don't have any worries, hopes or stress now.

When I said before that it was like stradling two worlds, I was, of course, referring to life and death. But this place is not really a place of death. It lacks all the darkness, sadness and fear usually associated with that word. Cemetaries are built by and for the living, not the dead. Liing people create tombs, monuments, obelisks, sculptures-whole cemetaries full of them- to memorialize their loved ones and their own legacy. There are so many different ways that they do it. Just in my view from where I sit now, I can see two mosoleums, housing families of dead bodies. A great stone lion sits on top of a grave to my right, guarding the body of Robert Patterson (1792-1881). My backrest is a granite wall that forever entrenches the Bernett family, who, like many others, were so desperate to cling to their family ties, even in death, to insist on a burial place that distinguishes them and their loved ones and unifies them for eternity. These graves show what the surviving family members thought of their dearly departed. This is where they came to remember them. True, they were often sad when they came here; sad for their loss, for the ache of longing for one last hug, one last moment. But, their grief does not linger here. There is an incredible peace at this site.

78 acres of graves, tens of thousands of bodies burried here. People. Dead. Never to laugh or smile or kiss or feel, ever again. But how many more living people have walked here among them. People who have come here to study the history of the site or the people interred here. People come here to take pictures and sight-see and take it all in.They come here to cry and mourn. Dressed in black, they come to lay a flower on a grave. Whatever their reason, they come here and breath life into the field of stones. They, the living, carve names and dates and inscriptions, and carve meaning into this grassy hill site.

There is no border between life and death. The walls of this cemetary don't keep death in, and they don't keep life out. The two are one, they mingle, they're part of the same cycle. Walking along this path, I'm not stradling two worlds. I'm living, I'm dying. But, as I stand up, stretch and, without thinking, glance at my reflection in the glass window pane of the mosoleum nearby, though my body is aging and deteriorating by the second, right here, right now, I'm mostly living.