The Living Landscape of the Dead

I recently rode my bike through Forest Park in Queens heading south from the park’s northeast corner. The sounds of my tires crushing acorns gave way to merengue coming from a five-year old’s birthday party, which in turn gave way to the smack of a club bearing down on a white ball. According to the stalwart golf attendant, the course features a fairly difficult terrain with deep shifts in elevation and a curvy first nine that open to straightforward fairways. If you keep heading southwest in the park you pass through an oak forest, the city’s largest continuous expanse of the species. Even further south, you end up in the land of the dead, where cemetery meets cemetery after cemetery. 

The unfolding landscapes of Forest Park could stand in as metaphors for life, with the acorn seed representing birth followed by a child’s party and the youthful beat of merengue. The golf course could represent obstacles and goals of a career. The mature oaks epitomize retirement. The cemeteries are a rather literal metaphor, as they embody an unavoidable end. The unfolding landscapes represent the ideal American dream, with the final resting spot being a good way to end a good life. If only we could all be so lucky.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, some of the most shocking images that flashed across American screens were of hundreds of coffins being covered in soil by inmates from Rikers Island on Hart Island. It was, for both the dead and the incarcerated, the ultimate indignity and a vivid commentary on the state of the nation. Whether for the thousands of AIDS victims, the tens of thousands of homeless, or the hundreds of thousands of impoverished, being buried on that sad island in Long Island Sound represents the worst possible endings.

Queens cemeteries sit near the opposite end of that spectrum from Hart Island. They’re decidedly middle-class enclaves, like much of the borough. The extreme opposite would be the grand tombs of Woodlawn in the Bronx or the very pricy, though modest, plots still available at Trinity Church Cemetery at 155th and Broadway. But the Queens cemeteries capture the city in a way that no other cemeteries do, not just for their massive size (three million buried in Calvary Cemetery alone), but also for the repetitive nature of the tombstones, like the row homes nearby. These are, for the most part, basic grave markers representing hard working lives that ended much the same way they were lived: near to family and loved ones. 

The Queens cemeteries also reflect the borough’s ever-evolving diversity. Atop the slope at Lutheran All Faiths Cemetery rest owners of the old German names, the VonDeilens and Kinckmanns. As one descends, the German names yield to Irish and Polish names. A bit further down rest Russian and Chinese families, the Markovs next to the Engs. At Mount Olivet Cemetery the newest graves sit closest to the road and across the street from the Fresh Pond Crematory. Just beyond the iron gate a straight line of flowers from Latino families with fresh memories stretch far into the distance, while directly behind them the Europeans sit neglected. Quite often, the deeper and higher one travels into the cemeteries, the less care the gravestones receive. The dates on the stones are older, the weeds are higher, and the visitors are fewer. 

I would argue that the landscape also reflects a recent shift by Americans away from burials and toward cremation. Recent immigrants still tied to tradition bury and visit, while families that have assimilated prefer “Celebration of Life” ceremonies. Instead of wakes, we get happy-faced video slideshows to replace the corpse. It would seem that, as author and former undertaker Thomas Lynch has said, “Everyone is invited except the dead guy.” It wasn’t always this way. Burial was as much a rite of out of this world as baptism was a way in.    

For many, cemeteries are the most visceral of designed landscapes. I hold vivid memories of burials. I can recall the season, the wind, the light, and the slope of the lawn. As a cultural Irish Catholic (i.e.-atheist and my mother’s name was Garrity), I’m inordinately preoccupied by death. I enjoy what Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham University, calls “Irish holidays,” which is when he and his mother visited dead family members in Queens. 

After my partner and I moved to the Maspeth we found ourselves surrounded by cemeteries and I felt at home. On my morning commute I ride my bike between Mt. Zion and Calvary cemeteries with the Jews on my right and the Catholics on my left. I sometimes smell the earth from freshly dug holes. The photographer in me loves how the local zoning laws allow the guts of the city’s infrastructure and industry to butt up against the grave stones. I’ve photographed a distribution center’s big Coca Cola sign and the Department of Sanitation’s massive smoke stacks that loom over Zion with tens of thousands of gravestones in the foreground. 

I’ve observed how local stone carvers cater to particular populations. Beneath the Brooklyn Queens Expressway an Irish stone cutter faces off opposite an Italian stonecutter. More recently, a Chinese stonecutter created a very large pagoda just inside the gates of Middle Village Cemetery, brashly brandishing his name and telephone number. Across the railroad tracks from All Faiths Cemetery, the stonecutter at Davydov Monuments said that an upright stone engraved with the image of a loved one, the sort favored by Russion families, costs about $2500. He stressed that such stones are not allowed in all sections of the cemetery; one imagines that the VonDeilens and Kinckmanns would prefer such sentimental images be kept at bay.