Homage to The Dead

This Food for Thought is a companion piece to my story, “Ghostly Impressions” which was featured on Mary Ann Poll Real Ghost Chatter Podcast, Episode 95. You can listen to “Ghostly Impressions:  on MaryAnnPoll.com, Spotify or You Tube.

Whether horseback riding, hiking or snowshoeing through the Vermont hills the discovery of an old cellar hole hints that a homestead, sunken in history and hidden deep in the woods, was once there. It is a clue leading to the possibility of a nearby family cemetery. Over the years of climbing over stone walls and foundations I have been fortunate to discover such small family cemeteries. These old stones, weathered with age, covered in lichen, some indiscernible, others still clearly visible, introduced me to the art of gravestone rubbing. This craft was not a far leap from my lifelong love of  cemeteries, graveyards and local yore.    

                                                                            I have always loved these parks of the dead. The silence is broken only by birdsong, squirrels racing about and the occasional visitor. In autumn the graves are decorated with leaves the colors of fall majesty.  Gravestone rubbing was the next natural step in my journey of discovering and learning how to preserve history.

  In 1970 I bought my first box of gravestone rubbing wax and rice paper in an art store in Hanover, New Hampshire. That same green bar of wax is now shiny with rounded edges worn smooth over many years of use. 

Some believe gravestone rubbing to be a macabre craft. There is nothing sorrowful or dark about the art of gravestone rubbing. It is a spiritual event. I am preserving someone's life lying six feet beneath me, raising them from the dead and pressed onto rice paper.  

I enjoy speculating about these past lives. Local history, names and dates provide clues which come alive and whisper to me. I search for the oldest dates and am gratified when I find someone from

Mother and Child, the saddest graves of all

the 1700s or 1800s. Other clues are the verses etched into a tablet. Some are humorous, most filled with sorrow and grief. I choose stones whose epitaphs and history call out to me. Most are weathered with holes and scratches in their surface which are reproduced as imperfections on the completed rubbing.

Some of the epitaphs leave me wondering how they survived the grief of losing their mother and baby? Tim and I discovered her stone in a cemetery in South Newfane, Vermont. Ida was a wife and native of Kansas, who died at the age of 19 two weeks after the death of her infant son.

IDA: “O grant us, Lord, like her to live that like her we may die.” 

One of my earliest rubbings is that of Thomas P. Boyd, which I discovered in Hartland, Vermont in 2010. His gravestone is earmarked in history, not only by the words on his stone, but by the S letters written as F, the frugality of punctuation and the differences in spelling. I added punctuation for clarity.

“In memory of VF Thomas P. Boyd

who died October 10, 1795 A 63. He moved to Hartland in the year 1762, one of the first settlers bore the brunt of a new uncultivated wilderness, lived to see 3 of his tender offspring taken by death, one only left to see this stone."

"Behold and see as you pass by as you are now so you must be. Prepare your selves to follow me.” 

Such a gravestone deserves my homage to the history of this early settler ‘in a new uncultivated wilderness.’

How fortunate I was to be one ‘left to see this stone’ 231 years after his death.  

A woman and infant buried together revealing identical dates of death and the infant’s birth moves me. Death in childbirth is the ending of  hopes and dreams. A mother’s death just two weeks after her infants is heartbreaking. Did the mother die of grief or childbirth fever? How did the remaining husband and siblings survive? What were their lives like after she was gone? The infant mortality rate was extremely high in the 1700s and 1800s. One in five children never made it to their first or second birthday. The Raucher babies prove the heartbreak of this fact:

“Budded on Earth to bloom in Heaven”  

Edward Raucher, one month, 13 days, 1873;  Henry Raucher, 3 months, 25 days, 1874; Lewis Raucher, 25 days, 1875. 

One of the saddest tombstones I encountered was too large for a rubbing. It was the story of an absent, guilt-ridden son’s grief etched into the stone: 

             In memory of OUR MOTHER

Mrs. Eliza Adkison, Born January 1, 1820; Died June 20, 1882.

“Good by dear Mother you have left me. No more on earth your face I’ll see. Your tender voice is always with me. Through your illness I was absent yet you asked for me. My tenderest thoughts was ever with you though I was far across the sea.”  

I’ve discovered stones which list entire families with matching dates of departure. How did their lives end together so abruptly?  Was there a flood, a plague, a fire? The stones rarely tell of their demise; only their names and  the date of their deaths remain.

I also choose stones that have the most interesting verses. There are many that say, “Look at me, as I am now so you shall be.” I always find that verse a bit mean spirited. 

My favorites are  amusing epitaphs. One was the wife of a minister with many children. I imagine her life was filled with enormous duties, responsibilities and constant backbreaking work serving her husband, her family and the church. Her gravestone reads:

                                                  “She had nothing left to do but die.”  

My evil sense of humor fills in the rest of the verse, “And happy she was to go.” 

In the Pioneer Cemetery in Eugene, Oregon the verse on Judy Tegger’s gravestone is in bronze, impossible for an impression onto fragile rice paper. The amusing epitaph,

“Damn She Was Good,”

led me to research her life.  Judy died in 1994 at the early age of 53. At the age of 30 she entered law school and became a well-known, talented attorney. She was smart and spirited in the courtroom. She married a judge, Steven Ross Huff-Tegger. I imagine the conversations the two had around the dinner table or in the courtroom. My imaginings were not far from the truth. Her family writes: 

  “The epitaph was chosen by her grieving but immensely proud husband. Rather than opting for a traditional or somber verse, her family wanted to permanently memorialize her fierce intelligence, sharp wit, and incredible capability. In the context of her life, ‘Damn she Was Good’ serves as a dual tribute: a nod to her brilliant legal arguments in the courtroom and a testament to her vibrant excellence as a partner, mother and individual.”1

 In Brooksville, Florida, off a dirt road hidden deep in the woods, I discovered a Florida Cow Cavalry soldier, Mitchel Jones, 1840-1917, who served in the Confederate States Army. He is buried next to who I imagine is his son, Edgar L. Jones, PFC 306 Ammunition Train WWI, 1894-1961,

I continue to honor gravestones with my rubbings, raising them from the dead. I am witness to their place in this world, a visitor to their stones, their lives, their loves and               their existence. I resurrect their stones and their past. I often feel the presence of those who have passed around me as I kneel on their graves, rubbing their history back into the living world. 

I was confronted by a ghost in a graveyard in Cape Blanco, Oregon, which is featured in my story, "Ghostly Impressions." To this day, thinking of the moment of meeting this woman, chills run up and down my spine. I am grateful for the experience, of she showing herself to me.

In my own muddled translation of quantum mechanics I believe there are many levels of existence, past lives mingling with the present, like a many-layered cake.

The spirits surrounding us are grateful to discover a compatriot bearing witness to their lives. I’m happy they’re among us. Keep an open mind and an open heart. You might find yourself in the otherworldly company of spirits who would like to make your acquaintance.

In hopeful dreams we will all meet again. 

HAPPY TRICK OR TREATING!

1. Redditt: Damn She Was Good, Family Context, Donald Tegger, Steven Ross-Huff-Tegger, Marilyn A. Overland

Note from Author: My own

encounter in a graveyard with a ghost, “Ghostly Impressions”