I may have mentioned in the past few weeks that I am taking on a new project. After spending the day roaming around Old Town with my friends John & Jerry I mentioned that I wanted to write a book on cemeteries. Not a scary or haunted book but a book about the symbolism, traditions and meanings behind the things you find in a cemetery.
Believe it or not up until a few years ago cemeteries were a great place to learn about history and genealogy and see some great art work. If you have the time one day stop at any old cemetery in town and look at what is there. There are ornate statues, poems, art, gifts, etc that are left for the person that is buried in the ground. Now look at a newer cemetery what do you see? Not much, it looks like a park. That is great but where are the loving tokens left for the dead, where are the poems for the child that did not make it past a few months? There are none, because cemeteries are now considered "Eternal Care Facilities" which means they want to be able to mow over you without any trouble.
Believe it or not up until a few years ago cemeteries were a great place to learn about history and genealogy and see some great art work. If you have the time one day stop at any old cemetery in town and look at what is there. There are ornate statues, poems, art, gifts, etc that are left for the person that is buried in the ground. Now look at a newer cemetery what do you see? Not much, it looks like a park. That is great but where are the loving tokens left for the dead, where are the poems for the child that did not make it past a few months? There are none, because cemeteries are now considered "Eternal Care Facilities" which means they want to be able to mow over you without any trouble.
In the past it was the family who took care of the grave, they would go out on the weekend and weed around the headstone, put fresh flowers out and make sure everything was in good order. Now families don't go to the cemetery that often and the cemetery has rules about what you can and can not place out there. It is sad really.
Anyway, back to the book. My friend Jerry Santoniello is an amazing photographer and I thought what a great idea to mix her photos with the book. Jerry is like me; she will use any excuse to go to a cemetery or ghost hunting. So what better excuse than to say we are writing a book about them. It just happens to be a true excuse. We arranged to have our first outing on Sunday, March 9th. We did not really have any idea what cemetery we were going to go to so we did what every good person does, we looked at a street map.
We decided on Mt. Calvary/Santa Barbara Cemetery since they were fairly close and Santa Barbara Cemetery was where all those remains dug up in Old Town were moved too. There is a definite difference in the two cemeteries. Mt. Calvary is owned and operated by the Arch Diocese and is very well maintained. They have grass and trees as opposed to Santa Barbara which is just dirt and sand. We started in Santa Barbara since it was the oldest and found interesting graves right off the bat. One thing about old cemeteries is that you end up with more questions than answers about things. You also realize that the mortality rate for children was very high a hundred years ago.
After wandering around Santa Barbara and playing on the vaults we headed over to Mt. Calvary and wandered around there for awhile. We checked out their mausoleum area for both cremains (ashes) and caskets. They also have a section that is for babies and small children. This is fairly common in most cemeteries it can usually be found by all the toys and balloons on the graves. The main difference between the two cemeteries besides the care was that Santa Barbara was what I called a "poor man's" cemetery. Many of the headstones and markers were homemade. Some from planks of wood; others from concert. But they all had one thing in common; they were made with love for someone that had left this lifetime. You could feel the love there. They also have a pretty vicious wienie dog across the street that will bark at you while holding a squeaky toy in his mouth. So his bark is something like BARK BARK SQUEEK SQUEEK BARK. I was not sure if he was trying to threaten us or have us toss his toy. We left him with his doggy dignity and did not tread on his territory; besides we would have had to stop laughing at him in order to tread on his territory.
We left Mt. Calvary and decided to go to Fairview Cemetery which I believe is one of the oldest in Albuquerque. It is also in a pretty nasty part of town. When we arrived there were dozens of huge black ravens everywhere. And if you are like me they are creepy birds of death and very loud. This cemetery was completely different from the previous two, the vibration and feeling here was awful. The neglect and despair is very heavy here. We only went to part of the cemetery since it was starting to get colder and windy. But many of the graves are collapsing; which is never good. There is alot of destruction and vandalism there. I was interested in two parts of the cemetery that had military graves. I am interested in why they where here and not in Santa Fe. Hopefully some research will answer those questions.
In Fairview there is a section that is walled off and it belongs to Congregation Albert here in town. This part of the cemetery was nice, the feeling was peaceful and quiet. Very well maintained and some nice markers as well. There were some interesting writings on the headstones that I want to translate so that I know what it means and have a better understanding of their traditions.
After wandering the small Jewish section we left for the day and headed home. We are going out again in a few weeks to work on the next place. If you see or hear of any cemeteries or private graveyards you are think are interesting let us know and we will not only check it out but give you credit in the book when we are done.
And in case you were wondering here is what I do when I have time off and go to the cemetery with a photographer.
