I love old cemeteries. The older the better. I’ve been drawn to these sacred locations since I can remember, and I still don’t know what caught my interest in the first place. I like to think that I always knew these cemeteries were filled with lives lived, with history, embodied in headstones both simply and ornate.
My family didn’t raise me to fear death. It was an inevitable outcome, one we’d all face, so why bother to hide from it? It helped, I supposed, that my mom raised me with the belief of reincarnation, the belief that when you die, you’re born again into a new body. I found comfort in this belief, knowing I’d see my mom and grandparents again.
Cemeteries simply stood in memorium of all the people who filled the world. I didn’t want to die, but when I knew what I wanted for my final resting place. To put that in perspective, I didn’t really fantasize about weddings – but I definitely fantasized about my grave.
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As I grew, I realized quickly cemeteries aren’t filled with live inasmuch as they are quickly filled the forgotten. I often walked through cemeteries, admiring stones, reading inscriptions. Many stones were old and unkempt, ivy or bushes growing up and around them. Others were broken in half, some weakened by nature while others destroyed by vandals. There were some stones with moss so thick the words were no longer legible.
I found it sad, all of these forgotten people. I also learned that not everyone who died did so as an adult. There were so many children and babies spread throughout these cemeteries, it seemed impossible not to consider the pain of a life cut too short.
Sometimes, I cried for the children.
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I still love cemeteries, and my burial plans have only slightly changed, thanks to one of my favorite YouTube shows, Ask a Mortician. (But more on death and genealogy another time!)
That love of cemeteries wove itself into my passion for history and genealogy. When I first started genealogy, it was a natural extension of our family oral histories and my desire to be our family archivist. [CG2] My desire to be our family archivist came from a determination not to forget the people who came before me.
Fast forward over 15 years, and my relationship with genealogy has almost completely changed. I’m just as passionate now as I was then, but I’m no longer naïve about the fact that simply knowing the name of some great-great-great-great grandparent means they are not forgotten. It is not possible to truly know those people – and there are thousands of people that went into making each and every single one of us today – in a way that is truly meaningful.
What we can do is discover more about their lives in the context of their communities and the world they lived in. Through a variety of primary documents, written and oral histories, photographs, and more, we can create a framework and make certain educated guesses about the lives of our ancestors.
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Why does this matter?
The winners write history. That history often isn’t accurate and leaves out really important things that impact the world – and our personal lives – today. Like our strengths, values, traumas, and cultural memories.
The personal is political; we don’t live in a vacuum. Our family histories, even those not shared with us, contribute –good and bad – to who were today as individuals. We, as individuals, make up the world.
What makes us tick? How do our ancestors impact us today? How do we interact with the stories we learn, or don’t learn, about the people who went into making us? What about our family mythologies, what and how we tell each other? How does the nature of our genetics interplay with the nurturing we experience (or lack of nurturing?)
Names are simply names until we take the opportunity to explore them as complex people who lived and died within a context. They are lingering ghosts impacting us in one way or another, whether directly or indirectly, sometimes in minor and other times in incredibly impactful ways.
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When I walk through a cemetery, I wonder about the people buried there – the ones with names carved into stones, and the ones buried without a memorial. These places are sacred, and I find more peace in a common cemetery than in any church I’ve visited. Calmness settles, and I am content.
Let’s explore our histories, and the complexities, together.
Maiden Name Unknown 