In your Halloween unit in third grade English, your teacher may have written the word “cemetery” on the whiteboard and asked you to make a word map, and you probably would have added words like “spooky,” or “scary,” or “creepy” — and I think a lot of people would write the same thing as adults. Cemeteries are often places we avoid, places we are fearful of, and places that are seen as outside of daily life. They come with a lot of emotional baggage as well as superstitions, and a lot of people have painful memories of standing at gravesides — so why do some people want to hang out in cemeteries? And, more importantly, why should cemeteries become a place where more people spend time?
The urge to commune with the decomposed is not modern — philosophers and religious leaders have long encouraged people to contemplate their mortality, and visiting cemeteries can help facilitate that kind of difficult meditation. Twentieth century thinker Martin Heidegger specifically recommended it. Furthermore, various cultures across space and time have kept the dead close at hand by keeping loved ones’ remains in the home, or erecting mausoleums on family property.
While in Canada’s dominant culture — that of milquetoast English protestantism — individuals may enjoy visiting loved ones’ graves in the course of their daily lives, it’s by no means normal or expected on a community level. This is not the case in other cultures; in Mexico, for example, people celebrate the Day of the Dead, and in China, during the festival of Qingming, families gather to clean their loved ones’ graves and bring them food. So, the impulse to avoid death as though it’s contagious is not inherent — it’s cultural, and it only has to mean as much to you as you want it to.
But what about if you want to hang out in a cemetery where you don’t know anyone? Is it one thing to go for a walk through a graveyard, but another to bring a picnic lunch and a book, or even — God forbid — a laptop? To answer these questions, I think it’s important to check in with yourself about why you want to hang out in the cemetery.
I’ll admit it — when I was a troubled teen, I fantasized about hanging out in cemeteries, writing poetry, and looking as edgy as I would have looked if my mom hadn’t forbidden me from buying goth clothes on pain of being sent to therapy. But if I had done that, I would ultimately have been objectifying the other people in the graveyard, both alive and dead. I would have been using them as a backdrop to project my dark and twisted feelings to the world, like the inverse of Christian teens on missions trips taking pictures with a bunch of African kids whose names they don’t know to project what good people they are. The dead may be dead, but they’re still people — or at least they were. So treat them like people.
With all that said, is it even possible to hang out in a cemetery without objectifying the other people there?
In my opinion, yes. It’s healthy to want to be more familiar with death than is currently normal in our society, and it’s okay just to like cemeteries; they’re beautiful, they’re peaceful, and they were designed to be visited. It’s interesting to look at the names and dates on tombstones, and to think about what all the different styles and images can tell you about the people they honour and the people who bought them. You can also use your time there as a memento mori – a reminder that you too will die one day, so you should know what you want from your life. Even before I began visiting cemeteries, I didn’t realize what I wanted to do with my life until I started thinking seriously about death — but then, I want to be a funeral director, so I might be biased.
Ultimately, if you want to hang out at a cemetery for non-mourning purposes, you should do it. Bring your knitting, bring your book, bring your homework, bring your lunch — even bring your friends. Cemeteries are public spaces which need to be integrated into our daily lives if we want to push past the taboos surrounding death in our society. The U.S. Urns Online blog (undoubtedly a renowned cultural touchstone) has a good entry detailing decorum that’s widely applicable — at least to most cemeteries in North America — including a list of activities that are fun and non-disruptive, like bird-watching and taking grave rubbings.
So go forth and hang out at cemeteries — just be respectful of why other people might be there. Also, don’t leave litter. Don’t play music aloud. Give others a wide berth and pay attention to if you’re in their way. Maybe pull a couple of weeds if you see them in garden beds — but don’t try to clean any grave markers; without training and proper equipment, you could end up damaging them. However, you could reach out to the cemetery and see if they’re looking for volunteers to help with maintenance. And if you’re going to have sex in a graveyard, try to do it on a family member’s grave.
Image: Brielle Quon / The Cascade
