I’ve Visited a World of Cemeteries
Is That Weird?
We all have our little quirks.
One of mine is my love for cemeteries. I know. Weird, eh? But weird is a good word to describe the word quirk. My love for cemeteries goes way back.
While I was visiting my grandparents one summer when I was very little, they took me to a cemetery in their town to see the burial plot of a little seven-year-old girl who’d died many years before. Her parents were, of course, grief stricken, so to help them cope with her death they adorned her grave with a dollhouse instead of a headstone. Her father had been in the process of building the dollhouse for her before she died. It was painted white with plenty of glass windows. Inside the house they’d placed some of the child’s favorite toys. A doll, a highchair for the doll, and other trinkets.
It shook me to the core.
It was at once macabre and romantic. Many years later, I returned to see the dollhouse as an adult. It had the same impact on me. Vivian May Allison died in 1899 but she has lived on in my mind for almost 70 years.
Thus began my love affair with cemeteries.
I even lived on Cemetery Road in Maine for many years as an adult. Our house stood at the end of this gravel road that turned into a logging trail running through three miles of woods behind our house. Our closest neighbors lived in the little country cemetery that I passed every day to and from work. The graveyard was old with graves dating back to the Civil War. I have spent many an afternoon walking amongst the wild violets or fall leaves while reading epitaphs.
Sigh
When I was about 12, I went to Guatemala with my family for about six months and we visited an amazing cemetery in Guatemala City. It was like a city for the dead with quiet streets lit by streetlights after dark where the mausoleums of stone with windows that you could unabashedly peer through stood somber and silent. The cemetery was surrounded by walls. The poorest people were buried in drawers that slid into these walls. I’ve seen other cemeteries that do this type of burial in Portugal and Spain.
Spain, where I’ve wintered for the past 18 years, has a lot of cemeteries that consist of walls with drawers for the dead.
Then there’s the Japanese cemetery that I visited while in Kyoto. The site was packed with thousands of graves jammed very close together for as far as the eye could see. There wasn’t a spot of earth wasted. Here’s a selection of stock photos you can peruse.
In Prague I visited the cemetery in Vyšehrad. That’s where I saw some of the most macabre statues in my life. Antonín Dvořák is buried there along with over 600 other famous Czechs.
Here’s a few shots of a cemetery I visited in Lisbon, Portugal. Once again, designed like the city of the dead in Guatemala City. I took tram 28 to the last stop. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
But it doesn’t end there. I’ll finally be in Paris this year and my plans are to visit the PÈRE-LACHAISE Cemetery. OMG! I can barely wait. It’s one of the most visited cemeteries in the world and packed full of the graves of famous people. Chopin, Sara Bernhardt, Edith Piaf, and Jim Morrison are just a few. Once again, there’s that city of the dead quality to this sprawling cemetery that I’m sure will lure me into exploring for hours on end.
This is a short list of cemeteries that I’ve visited. There’s been other cemeteries in Ireland, Germany, England, Malta, Mexico, and all across America that I’ve enjoyed. The famous Hollywood Forever Cemetery was a real treat to visit and definitely worth an afternoon of exploration. Here’s a long list of all the famous people who were laid to rest there.
I don’t know why people are so spooked by the dead.
They’ve never done me any harm. My neighbors in Maine were quiet and no bother whatsoever. I can’t say the same of some of my living neighbors throughout the years. And although I’m not planning to be buried in the ground when I die, I find old cemeteries to be endlessly fascinating.
There’s so much history there and yet lots of room left for my imagination to create back stories.
What were the dreams and aspirations of the deceased? Were they loved? Did they suffer? I always notice how many children’s graves there are in the old cemeteries. Without modern medicine, the chances of burying one of your children before age five were extremely high.
Life and death. Past and present. Death is the one thing we all have in common. It is the great equalizer after all. Nobody can escape it.
Teresa is an author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
