Hillside Cemetery
Middletown, New York - September 4, 2010 Vi and I went to an old cemetery in Middletown called Hillside Cemetry.

Up until the 1700s, cemeteries were placed inside churchyards. But as urban population grew and graves were stacked, reopened, and reused, a new type of cemetery emerged, that of the “rural cemetery”.

A rural cemetery is more like a park placed on the outskirts of (instead of inside the) town. Curving paths make their way around headstones, grave markers, and mausoleums on landscaped and well-manicured lawns. The views are expansive as the land was carefully chosen for such a setting. Before public parks became common, rural cemeteries were the place where the general public can “enjoy refined outdoor recreation amidst art and sculpture previously available only for the wealthy.”

The first rural cemetery opened in France in 1804. The U.S. had its first rural cemetery near Boston in 1831. Hillside Cemetery in Middletown was established in 1861. The 52-acre cemetery has thousands of graves, some with architected mausoleums and many with sculptures that would rival those found in museums. The cemetery’s designer, Calvert Vaux, was a collaborator in the design of New York City’s Central Park.

To give a timeline, the American Civil War began on the same year the cemetery was established -- in 1861 when Lincoln was President. As such, three Civil War Medal of Honor soldiers are buried there.

Many of the graves we saw had inscriptions of birth in the late 1800s and death in the early 1900s. Some died young -- one we saw was at the age of 32 -- as if to underscore the fact that life expectancy for the period was 30 to 45 years.

Several graves were obviously family plots. Some markers had the names of two people, the husband and the wife. In one, the husband followed the wife 18 years after the wife died. When I showed it to Vi, she said, “Maybe he re-married.” I said, “If he did, would he be buried in the same grave?”

In contrast, Vi showed me a pair of markers that said the wife survived the husband only for a year after his death.

We made no further statements as we looked at the headstones. Implicit in the silence is perhaps the thought that we, too, will eventually go the same way. One of us will most certainly go ahead of the other who will then continue to live alone for an unknowable number of years.

Maybe discussing the inevitable -- death, in this case -- does not have to be avoided. Just like planning for the future, maybe it should be part of everyday, sensible conversation. The ancient mystic, Buddha, encouraged it. And as author Sherwin Nuland seemed to imply in his book, “How We Die” (1995), there may be a lesson to be learned from the face of a dying child. A mother who once watched her 9-year old daughter die noted how her daughter’s eyes showed no pain, only serenity and the look of release as her eyes looked past her. Even in death, children looked alive.

On the other hand, the pain that shows on the faces of dying grownups might not toil from the body’s suffering at all. For all we know, it might come from regret, remorse, and the torment of leaving behind unfinished business.

Anyway, I did not mean to end this in a somber note. The weather was mild and the sky was patchy making it ideal for heading outdoor and taking pictures. The cemetery, too, was extremely quiet. So quiet that Vi said -- with a look of disbelief -- she absolutely loved the place. It was scenic and tranquil like no place she's been to.

But did she love it enough that she would turn a picture of it into her computer’s wallpaper, I asked.

“Nuh-uh, no way”, she said emphatically. For all its peace and placidity she seemed to say, mind you, it still is a cemetery.

(source: Wikipedia.org)

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