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Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast By Glenn A. Knoblock
Arcadia Publishing has releases a new title in the Images of America series, the historic account of the cemeteries along the New Hampshire Seacoast. This collection is a must for anyone interested in local history, genealogy, or colonial-era art. Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Historic Burial Grounds of the New Hampshire Seacoast and browse other cemetery books!
Green-Wood Cemetery By Alexandra Mosca
Arcadia Publishing announces the release of the historic account of one of New York's most famous cemeteries. Aracdia Publishing's Images of America series has an extensive catalog of many cemetery publications! Please visit Arcadia Publishing to purchase your copy of Green-Wood Cemetery.
Announcements
Quoting Death in Early Modern England: The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb By Scott L. Newstok
An innovative study of the Renaissance practice of making epitaphic gestures within other English genres. A poetics of quotation uncovers the ways in which writers including Shakespeare, Marlowe, Holinshed, Sidney, Jonson, Donne, and Elizabeth I have recited these texts within new contexts. Visit Palgrave Macmillan and purchase your copy today!
Living by the Dead By Ellen Ashdown with illustrations by Mary Liz Moody.
A memoir about living beside a cemetery--and about the members of my family who came to rest at Roselawn Cemetery in Tallahassee, Florida. Please visit Kitsune Books for more information.
Graveyards of Chicago: The People, History, Art, and Lore of Cook County Cemeteries By Matt Hucke And Ursula Bielski.
Discover a Chicago That Exists Just Beneath the Surface - About Six Feet Under! Take a tour of Chicago's permanent residents! Please visit the Lake Claremont Press website to purchase your copy of Graveyards of Chicago today!
Epitaphs: The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers
For information regarding subscriptions, single issues, submission guidelines, deadlines, classifieds or advertising for future issues, please visit The Cemetery Club.
Guardians of the Soul: Angels and Innocents, Mourners and Saints with photography by John Bower and foreword by Claude Cookman
Indiana's remarkable cemetery sculpture is now available. Please visit Studio Indiana for more information.
West Springfield Massachusetts: Stories Carved in Stone by Rusty Clark
Features information on early New England gravestone carvers with more than two hundred photos and illustrations. Please visit the Dog Pond Press website.
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Technology allows for elaborately personalized gravestones |
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Written by DeadGirl
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Sunday, 09 November 2003 |
Fri, Nov. 07, 2003
Technology allows for elaborately personalized gravestones
By Susan Hogan/Albach
Dallas Morning News
DALLAS - Nothing was easy in the way Natalie Kirmss died. By the time she felt sick, the cancer had already spread through her body. Within a year, it claimed her life.
She's buried in Hillcrest Memorial Park in Dallas. A flat gravestone bears her signature. A bench bears her name. Her photograph is mounted on a monument that reads: ``twenty-two, forever twenty-two.''
``This was the last thing we could do for her,'' said her mother, Joyce Kirmss. ``We didn't want just a little gravestone.''
As the holiday season approaches, and folks visit cemeteries to remember loved ones, some will encounter computer technology that has literally changed the face of monuments and gravestones.
Photographs, family genealogies, notes from loved ones, and symbols of the deceased's hobbies and profession are being laser-etched, hand-chiseled, mounted or sandblasted into the stone.
Granite slabs used to bear only the deceased's name, birthday and date of death. Now, they look more like scrapbooks. Computers allow families to create intricate designs limited only by the size of their imaginations, headstones and bank accounts.
Drive through North Texas cemeteries and you'll find customized headstones with images of prized steer, beloved dogs, knitting needles, kites, Hook 'Em Horns, a Chevy pickup, parachutes, horseshoes, sunglasses, dominoes, tool belts, bowling balls, motorcycles and more.
In some cemeteries across the country, mourners can enter a library and watch pre-recorded videos of the deceased.
There's even technology for glow-in-the-dark tombstones and for ``talking tombstones'' -- you press a button, and the recorded voice of the grave's occupant rings forth.
``People want to make a statement,'' said Perry Giles of Waxahachie, Texas, president of the Monument Builders of the Southwest. ``We do a lot of outdoor scenes, pictures of people fishing or deer hunting.''
He's also done Dallas Cowboys football helmets for diehard fans.
``Historically, dying was connected to spirituality and a belief in an afterlife,'' said David Moller, a scholar of death and dying at Indiana University. ``The way we grieve today is a lot more secular.''
Where Bible verses were once the rule, personal messages are becoming increasingly common. ``He was a young cowboy and he rode those ol' bulls,'' reads a monument in Fort Worth.
``There're no longer any rules,'' said John Horan, spokesman for the National Funeral Directors Association. ``We're seeing monuments that reflect more of a person's family and interests and less about an individual's religious convictions.''
Families can now order the new gravestones directly off the Internet.
``In the old days we were limited to monument builders' ability,'' said Joseph McCabe of www.everlifememorials.com in Corpus Christi. ``Now you design the memorial by computer, which spits it out on a stencil, and then it's sandblasted into the granite.''
Families say the personalized gravestones help them cope with their grief. But critics say the customizing can trivialize death, diminish the spiritual significance of cemeteries and reflect the desire of materialistic baby boomers to build shrines to the self.
``The funeral industry markets this with the claim that everyone does this, and if you don't go along you won't be showing respect to the dead,'' said Bruce Chilton, an Episcopal priest and religion teacher at Bard College in New York.
``This presents a huge pastoral challenge,'' he said. ``There's a fine line between permitting a person as much memory as possible and helping them commend the departed to God instead of trying to hang on.''
But Giles, the Waxahachie monument specialist, insists that if anything the new monuments make cemeteries more sacred.
``You're not just walking through a graveyard of names anymore,'' he said. ``You get a lot more connection to the deceased.''
Rita Denton of Dallas said she stopped going to church a year after her 14-year-old son, Michael, was killed in a traffic accident. She finds spiritual solace at his grave, which is surrounded by a U-shaped garden, a meditation bench, chimes hanging from trees and a black granite monument filled with poetic words from Emerson.
The serene setting at Hillcrest Memorial Park is centered on Michael's flat headstone. It bears a photo of him skating down a street on the Fourth of July, waving American flags and smiling broadly.
``We felt the need to do something special,'' Denton said. ``I can't tell you how many times folks have stopped by and said how much they loved it.''
Carolyn Waghorne's son, Carter, is buried nearby in a similarly sized plot. His love for horticulture is represented in a lush garden. His gravestone bears a haiku written by his classmates.
The personalization ``makes you feel better,'' said Waghorne, whose son died suddenly from bacterial meningitis at age 17. ``To me, do whatever gives the family some peace. It needs to be in good taste, because there's always another person next to you.''
Instead of a photograph, the Waghornes put the image of a footprint on Carter's headstone.
``He always went barefoot,'' Waghorne said. ``He would get in a class to take a test and he would take his shoes and socks off. He said he could think better barefooted.''
Barbara Gross, cemetery manager of Hillcrest Memorial Park, said families are encouraged to use their ``artistic imagination.'' In years past, she said, cemeteries got away from the artistry and statuary that made them places of beauty.
``For awhile, the trend was toward flat markers,'' she said. ``You wouldn't have many trees because you'd have to mow around them. They weren't beautiful. They weren't friendly. It was all for efficiency.''
During the Victorian era, mourners created elaborate cemeteries that captured life's fragility and the inevitability of mortality. For many centuries, people grieved publicly and wore clothing that distinguished them as mourners, said Moller, the Indiana professor.
But children who grew up in the latter half of 20th century had little direct experience in dealing with death, he said. Care of the dying was taken over by the medical establishment, and the dead were turned over to funeral professionals.
``Cemeteries became bland and uniform,'' he said. ``What you're seeing now are people trying to reverse the trend of denial.''
But Lucy Bregman, who teaches religion at Temple University in Philadelphia, said personalized markers may be another way of denying death.
``If you focus on celebrating life and you have the tombstone filled with stuff about their life, is that facing death or denying that death happens?'' she asked.
At North Texas cemeteries, there are gravestones with photos from weddings, skydiving, school, vacations and more. Some families chose multiple photos, tracing the departed's life from birth to death.
And alongside cliched epitaphs such as, ``Gone but not forgotten,'' you'll find:
``She loved the phone.''
``She was a dedicated homemaker and companion to her husband of 71 years.''
``I'll love you until 2 days after eternity.''
``You were my baby, then my child and now you are my sadness.''
``I'm going to see a man about a dog.''
``I've made a lot of deals in my life but I went into the hole with this one.''
Many of these gravestones are also engraved with religious symbols, usually Christian -- crosses, praying hands, open Bibles.
Some Jewish graves display a Star of David, and perhaps a photo or a pile of pebbles atop the gravestones to show visitors have been there.
Crescent moons are common on Muslim markers, but there is almost never a photograph. In the Muslim area at Restland Memorial Park in Dallas, only one headstone bears an image of the deceased. It's his profile, cast in bronze.
``Mainstream Muslims and theologians do not recommend photos,'' said Mohammad Suleman, president of the Islamic Association of North Texas. ``They think paying homage in that way is going overboard.''
In the old days, tombstones were almost always made from marble or gray granite. These days, bronze is also popular, and granite comes in multiple colors, either polished or rough, and in a variety of shapes, including hearts, cubes, crosses and circles.
``We know how to manipulate long names, sayings and images to fit on the marker and when to say, `We can't do anymore. You're getting carried away. You're not going to be happy,''' said Don Spradling of Spradling Monument Service in southeast Dallas.
The new technology isn't cheap, and families can easily spend thousands of dollars on customized monuments. But that personal touch is taking on growing cultural significance, said the Rev. John E. Alsup, who teaches at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
``This is the way families say this life mattered,'' he said.
But the secular displays can never be as meaningful as spiritual ones, Moller said.
``No matter how many pumpkins we bring to a graveside or secular rituals we participate in and reinvent, they will never provide the same sense of comfort and solace that spiritual beliefs and rituals can,'' he said.
Even the language of death is changing. Many cemeteries today prefer to be called memorial parks. Instead of ``tombstone,'' they talk about memorials and monuments. The funeral industry is referring to itself as the death-care industry.
Despite the new technology, graves in North Texas are still predominantly traditional. Many of the dead buried here, according to their epitaphs, were ``an inspiration to all who knew'' them, are ``sleeping in the arms of Jesus'' or ``resting in God's hands.'' They are someone's ``beloved'' mother, father, sister, brother, wife, husband, grandma or grandpa.
``North Texas is probably the most traditional area of the country,'' said Spradling, the monument maker. ``There's volumes of stuff available that you won't find in cemeteries here. People want what mom and dad have. They don't veer from it very much.''
Sometimes the old and new are combined. A Fort Worth monument shows a couple, presumably husband and wife, standing under a tree looking off to the sunset. Next to the etched image is a Bible verse: ``Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.''
Phillip Jackson said his parents and brother were buried the traditional way at Hillcrest Memorial Park. But he also purchased glass niches in the mausoleum library to display pictures and possessions that represented their lives.
His brother's display includes an autographed baseball, a baseball trophy, a Yankees button and a picture of him with Mickey Mantle. His parents' niche features a black-and-white photo of the couple, a red Christmas ornament and political buttons collected over the years.
``This is a celebration of their lives,'' Jackson said. ``I'm trying to tell the story of who they were in a little enclosed area.''
Cemeteries have rules about the kinds of markers and memorials allowed. Many forbid anything hurtful or vulgar.
But exceptions are made, as in the case of Capito ``Cap'' Richards, who's buried in the tiny town of New Madrid in southeastern Missouri. When he died there was never a doubt about what to put on his gravestone.
It was the phrase he used for himself and for others. It was the phrase the Catholic priest used to end his homily during Richards' funeral Mass.
It's a phrase containing the only curse word to be found in the town's cemetery. Carved in granite, a testament to 85 years of clean living, it says: ``A damn good man.''
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FINAL WORDS
Some epitaphs found in North Texas cemeteries:
--''A rose in our lives, love of my life.''
--''Here lies one crazy half Puerto Rican who was born in Texas, who loved his family, friends, church, business, community and ranch.''
--''A loving wife, mother, friend and pediatric nurse who freely gave of herself.''
--''We have loved the stars too well to ever fear the night.''
--''He looked at every man as an individual''
--''As good as the best, better than most''
--''Here lies total goodness, innocence and love''
--''We had so little time together''
--''He died as he lived -- a Christian''
--''Ours for a little while, with Jesus forever.''
--''Child of God, graduate of the school of love, wisdom and faith''
--''Your bright smile and caring heart made this world a better place''
--''Daddy's just sleeping''
--''Happy journey sweet lady until we meet again''
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7207101.htm |
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