Ashhole

*Warning:  non-knitting content!*  (Back with more Chinese Lace soon, but right now I'm so sick of that $#85&* pattern!)

Spring is in the air...although here in New England, that springy air is fickle, wafting into our lives for a day and then disappearing for a week.  I prefer to say that spring is in the light, which arrives earlier, stays later, and grows bolder with endearing dependability--why, you could set your clock by it!  (We do?  Oh, right.)

Anyway, this spring, this girl's thoughts turn to...cemeteries.  Yes, it's bizarre, even for me, who has always had a somewhat morbid mind (Six Feet Under fans, raise your hands).  Backstory:  Our elderly neighbor on Cape Cod passed away a little over a year ago.  One day last summer, I took my toddler for a bike ride and we visited her grave, in the cemetery at the end of the street.  After that, for weeks, every time we passed the cemetery he said, "There's our neighbor.  Can we go see her again?"  One day my husband was in the car, and wondered aloud if the cemetery was full (it's an appealing one, as cemeteries go--hilly, filled with rhododendrons and large oaks, with graves dating back to the 1700s).  So I checked; it was, except for a weedy little patch containing flush markers and "cremains."

Not long after that, I found out that a longtime acquaintance, a young mother with three daughters under the age of 7, had died suddenly and unexpectedly.  And although she grew up in the same Boston suburb where I now live, and would be buried here, next to her grandmother, she died in Mexico City, where her family now lives.  For some reason this fact nagged at me; I know this makes no sense, but I couldn't help feeling that she would be lonely.  Weird, huh?  Anyway, last fall, I attended a graveside memorial service for her at Newton Cemetery, pictured here--the first time I had ever entered its gates, even though I pass its grounds daily.  It's quite beautiful, with a small lake and fountains, and larger than you would expect.  And mostly full, as I found when, on a whim, I inquired at the office.  A week later, I read a Boston Globe Sunday magazine article about--of all things--several of the largest cemeteries in the area!  And two of them, Mount Auburn and Forest Hills, still had gravesites available!

No, I am not sick--not the kind of sick that puts you in imminent danger of dying, anyway--nor is anyone in my immediate family, knock on wood.  Nor do I believe in life after death, although I kinda wish I did.  My grandmother eschewed traditional burial, choosing instead to have her ashes scattered over a lake from a hot-air balloon.  So I just don't know why, but after I read that article, I made appointments at both Mount Auburn and Forest Hills, and on a gorgeous October day, I found myself touring the latter with my counselor, a friendly young woman.

Talk about a city of the dead!  Forest Hills is enormous, with a number of (as yet) sparsely populated areas, as well as the older ones, which contain a number of Boston's past prominent citizens.  You can pick up a handy guide at the office, with the most notable gravesites and monuments marked on  a map.  The trees are simply spectacular.  AND, unlike most cemeteries, F.H. allows visitors to jog, eat, drink, walk dogs, play frisbee--in short, it's like a park.  (With graves and mausoleums.)  I actually thought this was very appealing.  I could picture our descendants gathering the family for a Sunday outing:  visit the great-greats, bring a picnic, get some fresh air, sneak in a little history lesson on the side.  It's traditional for Chinese families (my mother is Chinese) to pay a visit to the ancestors at certain times of the year, bringing food and other tokens, and in fact, I noticed a lot of Chinese surnames on monuments at F.H.

Ah, the monuments.  There are a number of unusual ones at F.H., some quite large, and when I mentioned this to my friendly guide counselor, this is what she said:

"We do have guidelines for size of memorials, based on the size of the plot [you can buy 2 or 3 or more adjacent grave sites; each one holds one or two caskets, depending on whether there is enough depth to stack them, or 2 to 4 cremation urns...but I digress]...but the trustees have a policy of encouraging creative designs, and if they like your idea, they're willing to bend the rules."

Cool!  And what if you don't want any monument, even a small, boring one?  Why, they have a cremation garden, where your urn can be buried discreetly among ferns, flowers (and other urns), or if you want to go even more au naturel,

"...we can just pour the ashes into a hole in the ground." 

Yes, a braver person would have said (mustering all the innocence at her disposal), "Oh...and do you have a special name for the, um, the hole?" but I simply stifled a snort--Ash-hole?!--and decided it was time to move on to Mount Auburn. 

Well, at Mount Auburn, they have a decidedly different attitude towards the visitor:  NO bicycles, NO jogging, NO picnicking, NO lying or sitting on the grass, for heaven's sake, and most emphatically, NO DOGS.  When I told my cemetery services representative that dogs and picnicking were welcomed at Forest Hills, here is what he said:

"Well.  They have a different attitude over there.  I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to be visiting my loved one's grave, and look down and find I had stepped in some dog's...waste."

Ahem.  Me neither (ducking head with vague sense of shame).  So we headed out for our tour, during which I found out that there is really very little space left in M.A. (that Boston Globe article notwithstanding).  HOWEVER,

"If you see a spot you really like, we'll do our best to squeeze you in."

Is it just me, or do the folks at M.A. seem to be much more welcoming to the dead than the living?

Anyway, I'm telling you, when the foliage is at its peak, you should visit these places, even if you don't have a morbid bone in your body.  I mean, look at this (Mount Auburn).  Maybe I'm not morbid; maybe, now that spring has arrived, I just want to see the forsythia and magnolias and dogwoods and azaleas and rhododendrons and lilacs in these magnificent settings.  Only for the dead?  That would be a waste.

Edited to add:  It's so crass to talk $$, especially when it concerns one's eternal rest...but I just have to add that the lot for a mausoleum at F.H. will set you back over ONE MILLION DOLLARS--and that's before you even lay the cornerstone. 

Comments

[Kate]

Hi! I live in Newton, just moved! I'm also in the KNitting Scientists webring, thought I would pop over and say hello! We live in the Nonantum Village. Do you know if there is a knitting group there or nearby?

THanks!
Kate
PS- love the blog, will add to my faves!