Like most people, I never particularly cared for cemeteries, never would think of visiting one for pleasure or education. That’s changed. But let me go back to the beginning. Picture it: 1958. On the subway one day, going from Brooklyn to Manhattan, mom and I met one of our 100,000 relatives, Julia. It seemed that wherever we went, we met relatives. How could that be? Our family wasn’t that big and most of its members were still living in the Middle East. I speculated that maybe in Lebanon if a water pipe ran under your house and the neighbor’s, then you were related.

I think these New York relatives were what some Americans would refer to as shirt-tail cousins. There was my grandmother’s cousin’s wife, whom we had to call “aunt” out of respect for her advanced age. Currently she is 104 (if her date of birth is to be believed) and she’s still kicking – literally – no walker or wheelchair for her. There was my grandmother’s cousin’s wife’s mother whose arms still had the hint of the indigo dye the women of Yemen used to dye cloth. I remember she always colored her hair black just in case her dead husband looked down from heaven. She didn’t want him to see her with grey hair. There was also my “uncle” who was my second cousin’s godfather. There were many more, but you get the drift. It can be a bit of a mind-spin for a kid.  Oddly, the mystery was cleared up when I visited the midwestern United States.

I was newly married and getting to know my in-laws. They lived in a small town in Iowa, my second husband’s hometown. It’s population is under five hundred. I grew up in an apartment complex in Brooklyn that housed at least that many people. The visit gave me some new perspectives. I had never been someplace where there were more cows and chickens than people and more corn than weeds. I found myself in the cemetery one day and was surprised to see so many people had the same last name or were married to someone with that same name or were somehow related to about half the others in the cemetery. The light went on …

For the most part, the members of our family came from a couple of small mountain villages. The people like Julia that mom said were relatives probably were related to us, however distantly. It hit me too that cemeteries where neither scary nor depressing. They offered an opportunity to connect with the past and to let it speak. That thought came back to me recently when my photographer friend, Wendy Alger, and I went to Redwood City for a photo shoot at the historic Union Cemetery, home to approximately 2,400 people who died during or after the American Civil War.

As I walked around the six acre site, the number of graves for babies and toddlers made me appreciate living in a time when infant mortality isn’t so common. I was struck by the clear expressions of love in the way graves of married couples were juxtaposed and in the sentiments carved on headstones. I was intrigued to see fresh flowers on a grave that was about a hundred or more years old. I wondered who put them there. I noted graves with a date of death but no birth date, and this is the second western cemetery I’ve visited where Native Americans appear to be buried in a communal grave. No names. I had to ask myself what it was all for … the war that is … and any war for that matter. We all end up in the same place. Maybe that’s the best lesson or the only real lesson. Life is too short and much too precious for war.

UNION CEMETERY PHOTOS

Historic Site

American Civil War (1861-1865)

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Essay and photos ~ Jamie Dedes, 2012 All rights reserved