I went to the Norman Rockwell exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art yesterday. He was a remarkable human being. It seems like there are some people who should be exempt from physical death: those who make a difference in the larger world, and could continue to do so. Those who speak for us, interpreting the world and helping make sense of it. Those with exhibited potential to do that. Those with better ideas about how things should work who haven't yet had a chance to make it happen. Norman Rockwell is one of those people to me. And little Christina Green who was born into tragedy on September 11, 2001 and whose bright future ended in tragedy in Tucson last week. But no one escapes.
If you read my blog on pretty much any given week, you know that my favorite garden in Raleigh--or anywhere, if truth be told--is the Oakwood Cemetery. I love to walk in the cemetery in all seasons, from the lush green of spring and summer, through the colorful then barren fall, to the cold beauty of the snow. You would think cemeteries are the most stagnant of places. But I find there is always something new to discover--in both the physical landscape and in what my mind conjures up about the former lives of the residents.
It is time to say more.
A cemetery is the great equalizer. Every person on the planet has two things in common: we are each born into the pain and blood of our mothers and we all die and return to the earth. In between anything can happen. Like snowflakes, no two of us are exactly alike. The cemetery is the place where we all come together in the end. In what lies beneath the ground, though the box may vary, we are all eventually dust. What marks the spot above the ground, speaks of who we were in life. And how it speaks.
There are the beautiful, if ostentatious, markers of the famous--locally or globally: statesmen; presidents of women's organizations; early Raleigh landowners with neighbor- hoods now named after them; doctors and coaches whose lives touched many with healing or inspiration. There are the plain white markers in even rows straight in every direction of those who served their country in all the wars from the Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression as perhaps those lying here knew it; I have not found any union soldiers, but surely they are here) to the present day wars; those who died fighting and those who lived on. The markers in the slave section, those who were not allowed beyond obscurity in life or in death: tiny metal plates bearing only numbers. There are the "unremarkable" people to whom, though they are strangers, I feel a bond: Mabel, who left this life on my eleventh birthday; and Mary, who for 57 years loved the house and gardens that are now mine. And there are the children: many of their graves marked with angels and lambs. The stair-step markers of Annie, Emmie, and Johnnie, and two nameless infants; the children of one family who all died over the decade of the 1860s. How do parents survive such grief? Little Ashley Nicole, who should be celebrating her sixteenth birthday this year, but is forever four and a half. And, of course, there are the legions of ordinary lives. The ones who lived their days in the usual obscurity that most of us do. Beloved by family--or not; successful in whatever they might have done--or not; living long lives--or dying way too soon; happy--or not. For most of the residents of Oakwood who were ordinary people, how they lived is invisible. But not for all.
There are the sometimes odd markers that speak of who the deceased was: the wife of an architect who designed a house on a pedestal to mark his beloved's resting place; the tree trunk markers of Woodsmen of America; the photographs permanently affixed to the marble. And the beautiful or strange sentiments engraved in stone: "Beloved Dad," "Not gone, merely sleeping." Among the grand, landmark tombstones and monoliths, are the homegrown decorations added seasonally to plain markers. These are my favorites. Wade Edwards--and now Elizabeth--of course has one of the most noticeable works of art in the cemetery. A 15-foot tall angel holding in her bosom a young man. But at her base and around the bench that bears Wade's name (interestingly there are no dates anywhere to be found) are perennial and annual plantings and pieces of garden art: a rabbit and stakes that say things like "Welcome to my garden." More have appeared since Elizabeth joined her son there. Ashley Nicole's mounded grave is a well-tended, year-round garden, with a bench on which I once saw perhaps her mother sitting. Clearly she was loved in life and not forgotten in death. "Dad," whose grave marker is not remarkable save for the seasonal decorations: jack-o-lanterns replaced by a Christmas tree; and a hanging marker proclaiming, "If love could have saved you, you would have lived forever." How better could any of us want to be remembered, really? I am watching for valentines.
I could describe so many...but really I want to share it visually. I invite you to a slide show; just click on the link below. But mostly, if you are able, I invite you to visit in person. Give me a call if you want company. I would love to be present as you discover for yourself this remarkable garden.
Oakwood Cemetery
There are the sometimes odd markers that speak of who the deceased was: the wife of an architect who designed a house on a pedestal to mark his beloved's resting place; the tree trunk markers of Woodsmen of America; the photographs permanently affixed to the marble. And the beautiful or strange sentiments engraved in stone: "Beloved Dad," "Not gone, merely sleeping." Among the grand, landmark tombstones and monoliths, are the homegrown decorations added seasonally to plain markers. These are my favorites. Wade Edwards--and now Elizabeth--of course has one of the most noticeable works of art in the cemetery. A 15-foot tall angel holding in her bosom a young man. But at her base and around the bench that bears Wade's name (interestingly there are no dates anywhere to be found) are perennial and annual plantings and pieces of garden art: a rabbit and stakes that say things like "Welcome to my garden." More have appeared since Elizabeth joined her son there. Ashley Nicole's mounded grave is a well-tended, year-round garden, with a bench on which I once saw perhaps her mother sitting. Clearly she was loved in life and not forgotten in death. "Dad," whose grave marker is not remarkable save for the seasonal decorations: jack-o-lanterns replaced by a Christmas tree; and a hanging marker proclaiming, "If love could have saved you, you would have lived forever." How better could any of us want to be remembered, really? I am watching for valentines. 
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