When I read Andrei Codrescu's essay collection, New Orleans Mon Amour, recently one of the sections that stood out for me was when he wrote about visiting the city's cemeteries. I mentioned this in my review for Voices of NOLA partly because everyone very nearly always thinks of the cemeteries when they think of New Orleans and also because Codrescu makes a point of saying that far from being odd, the way residents live with, and honor, their dead in New Orleans is actually much more civilized - and normal - then what we do in the rest of the country. From my review:
In “The Muse is Always Half-Dressed in New Orleans,� Codrescu talks about visiting Lafayette Cemetery with friends from out of state and experiencing the unusual culture of death that pervades life in the city. “Old cities soothe and ease the pain of living,� he writes, “because wherever you are, someone else was there before, had troubles worse than yours and passed on. I don’t see how people can inhabit spanking new suburbs without succumbing to terminal anxiety. We need the dead to make us feel alive. In New Orleans they’re at it full-time.�
I was thinking about this relationship with the dead the other day as I finsihed Howard Mansfield's wonderful collection, The Bones of the Earth. Written as a book about landmarks, he writes about brick bridges, elm trees and the oddness of shopping centers in this very witty and unique series of essays. It is in "The Grief Police" that I was struck most deeply however, as Mansfield writes about the confusion and alarm that is raised by people who seem to mourn too much - by families who turn gravesites into monuments of pinwheels and stuffed toys. Here he describes the decoration for 17 year old Jenifer Beaulieu:
They have decorated the grave with two colorful banners, one on each side, a butterfly on one and sunflowers on another. Next to the flags, just above the headstone are two lage redglass vigil lights, and on a shelf just below the inscription they have lined up more than a dozen small objects, including a teddy bear and a yellow smiley-face candle. On the ground are two wooden planters with flowers, a ceramic rabbit, a small cross, and two large plastic flowers with petals that spin in the wind.
Mansfield knows about this family because their display on their daughter's grave brought unwanted attention and led to a discussion in their town about appropriate measures of grief. Mansfield took the story and sought out similar situations in other towns, where mourners ask for the right to grieve any way they wish and cemetery owners and visitors say that grief must be more dignified. In Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery the argument goes back to 1839, when rules were established for decorations and stated "Good judgement and taste should prevail."
Of course the problem is that one person's good taste is teddy bears and another can barely tolerate tiny American flags for veterans. Where my grandparents are buried the flowers must fit in the bronze urn placed on their flat bronze markers. The lawnmowers go right over the graves - if you put something there then they just slice it up.
Nice, isn't it?
In New Orleans discussions about propriety and respectfulness that land a mourning family on the front page defending their smiley-face candle woud cause residents to shake their heads in disbelief. This is a ctiy that celebrates the dead- that embraces them at every opportunity and can not conceive of published rules of conduct. They still see their dead as family - as important parts of the living family - and not less significant then the flattened landscape. Of course the dead are above ground in New Orleans and maybe that is part of it - they don't have to worry down there about the ever important lawn mowers.
Mansfield does find people sympathetic to family wishes and notes that "the corporate cemetery must live by rules, but a small town cemetery knows that every life is an exception to the rules." Clearly in New Orleans they celebrate the exceptions, while the rest of us are still trying to figure out just how outside the box we want to live, let alone die.
Mansfield's book is outstanding and I highly recommend it. It was a Christmas gift based on the recommendation of the late lamented Common Reader catalog. I will certainly be looking for his other collections as well. He is quite an impressive and deeply thougtful writer.
