This is a much more recently written post for me. I visited the famous Pere Lachaise Cemetery just two weeks ago, and wrote this during my visit, while my hands turned a series of different colours from the cold. I hope you enjoy this little visit with me.
You get such a small piece of a life when you visit a grave.
In Pere Lachaise, it feels like even less. Sometimes even the name is worn away.
Other times there is just a name. Just a name and dates.
Some have a few more things added. Plaques placed on top: The Bank of France- in memory of our fallen comrade. To our cousin. Loved aunt.
Graves in French, English, Chinese, Hebrew, Arabic… I realise quite suddenly that I haven’t seen other scripts etched in stone.
One grave has a picture. No obvious name. But a plaque with the words “21 years old”. What’s more, he had quite the baby face.
Some have many plaques on top, but each bears a new name. Family members all crowded in together. For some, that’s the very definition of family in life. Why not in death?
Another grave has a copper work turning green. It marks her as a suffragette. There are fresh flowers placed on top, and a hand-drawn French flag, the word “FEMMES” across the centre: women.
“Time passes. The memory stays.”
To a friend. To a niece remembered. To our father. To my brother. Sometimes the plaque simply says: Remembered.
Flowers fake, potted, fresh, dead.
A cemetery so big it contains named streets and paths, a map offered in four languages to guide your way. Occasionally, a taxi drives through.
Family graves with one faded name, there by itself for more than a hundred years.
Family graves overflowing with plaques, names etched onto the sides now, desperate still to be listed and remembered together.
On one grave, someone has tried to cover a section, nailing new stone over old. It is there hanging by a single pin, fallen with the words behind it revealed. But where steel failed, time has not. The words are worn thin, lost to time.
Oscar Wilde’s grave is surrounded by a wall of glass. I thought more would be, to be honest.
In Edinburgh, there are multiple graves fenced off simply because JK Rowling walked there stealing names from graves (a trick of the trade centuries old). Oscar Wilde actually lived. The glass is covered in lipstick kisses. There is a notice asking that people do not mark the grave because the family has to pay privately for the damages. Over the wall, people throw flowers and love notes soaked through by the constant, gentle rain. One woman tells another of the trials he faced in his life.
Chopin’s grave is overflowing with flowers. I wait for other visitors to leave.
Proust’s grave has two fake bunches and a caricature weighed down with a rock at one corner, rain has plastered down the other three. It’s tucked away and hard to find.
Pissarro is buried in a family grave, the sixth name on the headstone. It’s also hard to find and completely uncelebrated, though I have seen hundreds of his paintings over the last few months.
One grave marked as “The Brothers”. It gives their names and respective ages. Their shared death date. A hundred and one years ago. There’s a story there, untold.
“To my dear spouse. Together we were happy. I will never forget you.”
“In peace, I lay. On mine, I watch.”
A shining gold name added to a faded old stone. In thirty-three years, she never found a reason to be buried somewhere else. Truly united at last.
A daughter with her name written beneath her parents. Her birth year and a blank space. She’s still living in the dash. Does she still believe she’ll be buried here? It’s carved in stone. It’s not carved in life.
Another tomb has been splintered apart. The stones separated as a small tree grew big. Life winning out over the sacrality we place on death.
A family member with keys to a large tomb, one with walls and a roof. What do you lock in a tomb? Now, my friends, there’s a story.
There are thousands of stories all around me. Most, I will never know.
The cemetery itself has a story. At first, no one wanted to be buried there. They had to excavate the remains of some famous people so that others would consent to be buried there.
Now over one million people are buried there, plaques on plaques, and yet more cremated. Now it’s a tourist attraction, and there are rules and waitlists for getting approval to be buried there. Quite a successful publicity stunt!
Over the past year, my words have been getting more abundant, and I am starting to see the stories all around me again. Tiny stories that lie hidden in a name – or even the space left for a name. It is a joy to return to.
In the cemetery, the dead still outnumbered the living. But the stories outnumbered everything.
