The Melting World

I love graveyards, though maybe many people find that odd. I like walking where I feel the bones and spirits are resting, reading the headstones and imagining the singular life of its occupant.

I once did a research project about an early turn-of-the-century graveyard in Alabama, how it grew into being an idealized community of the powerful people’s afterworld (basically replicating what they tried to achieve on earth) and how the poor and forgotten were relegated to the potter’s field (unmarked except for sunken squares of grass which were slightly a darker green), usually at the base of a hill.

The ‘prominent’ members (a.k.a the rich dudes) placed their plots on the hill, facing East, to be the first to see the sun smooch and glint the trumpets, and topped their bones with air-piercing grand obelisks, their wives given smaller (at times miniature versions of the men’s) headstones, and usually feminized with flowers, angels, and vines – to keep them put, I surmised. It surprised me to discover that some prominent families buried their ‘slaves’ in their family plots as well. Did these enslaved people, and later the economically-enslaved servants, get a say on that, did their families? I wondered how such a scenario played out in real life, among real people.

But it was the potter’s field and those rough simple headstones -often made illegible by time – and some made of poured cement inthe more recent years -that intrigued me the most. They were pushed to the outer, lower fringes, the western areas of the graveyard. To me their silencing meant they had the most to say and definitely the least written about them. Well, I have more stories to tell about graveyards, but for now will let it rest. But being at the edges, that is where I like to stand and think, in life as I walk toward the great long sleep.