All Photos by Harold Tollison
From our publication The Vampire Journal
#5 (now
Realm Of The
Vampire):
REFLECTIONS
OF A GRAVEDIGGER
by Brian
Miller
It is one in the morning as I write this. It's
raining hard outside and I have a candle burning. The power is out.
I am alone with my thoughts, and that is not such a good thing on a
night like this.
Because I think about Death.
It wasn't long ago that I would find myself lying awake, listening
to a storm like this one and waiting for the alarm to go off. Then
I would have to psyche myself up for another day in the cemetery. I
would be out there in the rain on my backhoe, rolling up freshly cut strips
of sod, digging graves and filling them in.
And thinking about Death.
That is the hardest thing about working in the funeral services.
Every day, whether you are aware of it or not, you'r thinking about
Death. Such a simple thing, such an inevitable thing. Most people
drift through their lives without thinking seriously of their own Death.
But a gravedigger has no choice.
Others employed in the funeral service, with the exception
of morticians and crematorium attendants, don't seem as obsessed with the
reality of Death as are the gravediggers. Their view of Death is no
doubt influenced by the antiseptic aspects they have grown accustomed to.
They sell caskets and markers, vaults or crypts. They help bereaved
family members with everything from budgeting funeral expenses around their
income to assist in the choice of the decedent's final attire.
They don't see the physical side of Death. They aren't
in a position to experience it on a daily basis. Only the gravedigger
can tell you what it is like to bury a human being: how you can feel the
body shift in a casket as you lower it into a grave; how it feels to stand
on a sealed vault while spreading a layer of sand around the vault to prevent
the grave from sinking; how it feels to crouch in the back of a Westminister
crypt while your partners push a casket in for you to guide to its final
resting place; how the casket blocks all the light save its silhouette as
it slides forward on the concrete; how it feels to set that same casket down
and inch up the walls of the crypt while the people on the outside lower
the casket with a strap tied to the end handle; how it feels to have spiders
crawling over your face in the dark with the dead at your feet. The
dead: shells of a significant someone who once laughed, cried and made
love just like us.
Only the gravedigger knows.
I have a vivid memory that will plague me forever. It
always comes to mind on nights like this. I had just finished digging
a double-deep grave. The earth here was quite sandy, with interesting
layers of darker strata, almost like an Indian sand painting. My partner
had taken the last load in the dump truck and hadn't come back yet. The
bottom of the grave had to be leveled before we lowered the vault and it
was close to quitting time. The gray sky that had threatened rain all
day was fulfilling its promise.
I got off the backhoe, grabbed my favorite spade and jumped into the hole.
The grave swallowed me.
It was deeper than I had anticipated. In my haste to
finish before quitting time, I had gotten a little carried away. A
standard grave is about five feet deep, a double about eight feet. This
one was closer to ten. I tried not to think about how I was going to
get out and concentrated on the work at hand.
Sounds from above are muffled in the grave. The rain
was coming down quite hard and the side walls caved in a little. I
had exposed the side of a vault in the neighboring grave. It was like
a cross section drawing; the vault, with its casket locked within and several
hundred pounds of earth on top, ending at surface with dew spangled perennial
rye grass.
The floor was level, my job here was done. I looked up.
The sky was full of dark gray clouds, streaked with shades
of black. An old sycamore was silhouetted against the sky, its twisted
branches lifeless and bare. All of this framed by a rectangle ot earth
nine feet long and four deet wide, the side walls stretching up as if from
a hole twenty feet deep.
That's when it really hit me--the inevitable fact of my own
impending Death. Someday I would be at the bottom of a hole like
this, (and if statistics hold true, then I would certainly find myself here
before my wife) only I would not know it. I would see nothing, hear
nothing and feel nothing. My body would decompose until there was nothing
but bones that would crumble if you happened to touch them.
I would be DEAD.
But this is NOT my grave.
This thought disturbed me profoundly. I had seen the
effects of the grave upon the dead countless times, and could picture myself
in that state all too easily. I became nervous as I realized how deep
this hole was. The walls seemed to close in on me. I needed to get
out. The air down here was suddenly rank with Death, possibly emanating
from the corpse in the exposed vault. I held the spade over my head
and jumped up for the corner of the grave and succeeded on the first try.
Using the spade like a chin-up bar, I pulled myself out of the grave.
And into the rain.
But a part of me will always be trapped at the bottom of that
grave--staring up from the realm of the dead into the land of the
living realizing that our time is limited, and that we must do what
we can with our lives. The best we possibly can.
Because one day it will be over.
The power is on now. I can put down my pen and blow out
the candle. I can get out the typewriter and put this in a more appropriate
format. When I'm finished, I'll probably work on a story or two.
Perhaps then I can sleep.
There isn't much time.
The grave is waiting for all of us.
NOTE:
Check out some of our other pages: ghosts
& Angel of Death &
The Black Death
NEW ADDITIONS:
CEMETERY PHOTOS
HIGHGATE CEMETERY
PAGE
RECOMMENDED READING:
Beautiful Death: Art of the Cemetery
by David Robinson
Elysium: A Gathering of Souls -- New Orleans Cemeteries
by Sandro Russell Clark, Patricia Brody, A. Codrescu
Going Out In Style: The Architecture of Eternity
by Douglas Keister & Xavier A. Cronin
New Orleans Cemeteries: Life in the Cities of the Dead
by Robert Florence, Mason Florence, Ann Cahn
Permanent Londoners: An Illustrated Guide of The Cemeteries of
London
by Judi Culbertson & Tom Randall
Postmortem Collectibles
by C. L. Miller
Saving Graces: Images of Women in European Cemeteries
by David Robinson
Secure the Shadow: Death and Photography in America
by Jay Ruby
INTERESTING CEMETERY WEBSITES:
Cemeteries
http://www.totentanz.de/cemetery.htm
Worldwide Cemetery Page
http://gye.future.easyspace.com/
The Internet Cemetery
http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/8956/
Among the Stones
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Alley/4888/cems.html
Cemeteries
http://www.PublicVoid.com/cemeteries
Highgate Cemetery
http://www.tales.co.uk
Cemetery Culture: City of the Silent
http://alsirat.com/silence/
Literature of Death
http://www.alsirat.com/silence/literature/index.html
Danse Macabre
http://www.totentanz.de/totentanz.htm
The Gothic Literature Page -- Graveyard Poetry
http://members.aol.com/iamudolpho/graveyard.html
Death in Art
http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Rue/3757/main.html
New Orleans cemeteries
http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/6157/CemeteryLinks.html
City of the Silent--cemeteries
http://www.best.com/~gazissax/city.html
Rome catacombs
http://www.catacombe.roma.it/welcome.html
Kim Capuchin's Catacombs of Palmermo
http://members.tripod.com/~motomom/Palmermoindex-3.html
Museo de las Momias (Museum of the Mummies) in Guanajuato,
Mexico--Interesting
http://www.sirius.com/~dbh/mummies/
Catacombs of Paris--Good photos
http://www.fortunecity.com/marina/greenland/o/catas/catas.htm
Obsidian, The Catacombs of Paris--Good photos
http://www.madstone.com//catacombs/
Underground Paris--Catacombs of Paris--Good photos
http://www.xvt.com/users/kevink/cata/
Paris Corpses--Catacombs--Interesting
http://www.op.net/~uarts/krupa/corpses/1790_1900.html
Paris Cemeteries
http://home.pi.be/~novabel/cemetery4.htm
Il Trionfo Della Motte
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/rodin/69/index.html
Cemetery Impressions at gradeyard de
http://www.graveyards.de/
Rogue Pen Design: Cemetery Photography
http://www.roguepen.com/photography/
Violet Hoar's Graveside Photos
http://www.sjerk.clara.net/violet/gravesides.html
The Smoking Mirror
http://home.swipnet.se/mirror/index2.html
Cold Marble Cemetery Photos
http://www.dgbn.com/coldmarble/cem_list.php
Museum of Funeral Customs
http://www.funeralmuseum.org/default.shtm
Immortelle Net
http://www.immortelle.net/
The Bone Yard
http://www.ludd.luth.se/users/silver_p/kutna.html
Momento Mori
http://cmp1.ucr.edu/terminals/memento_mori/
Morticia's Morgue
http://www.morticiasmorgue.com/death.html
Michelle Blessemaille -- My darkness
http://esotericart.com/MichelleBlessemaille/
The Tombstone's Traveller's Guide--Worldwide--Interesting
http://home.flash.net/~leimer/
Cemeteries of Martha's Vineyard--New England cemeteries--Nicely
done
http://www.vineyard.net/vineyard/history/cemetery/cemlist.htm
Hollywood Underground--Cemeteries of the movie stars--Nicely done
& interesting
http://www.hollywood-underground.com/
Hollywood Hauntings
http://gothic.vei.net/hollywood/hhome.htm
Hollywood's Ghosts and Haunted Houses
http://www.seeing-stars.com/Died/Haunted.shtml
Haunted Hollywood
http://www.prairieghosts.com/hollywood7.html
Southern California Spooks
http://www.geocities.com/socalspooks/_oneeindex.html
Silent Spectres
http://www.silentsaregolden.com/articles/silentspectresarticle.html
Hollywood Forever Cemetery
http://www.hollywood-underground.com/hf.htm
Beneath Los Angeles
http://www.beneathlosangeles.com/
Morbid Curiosity: Celebrity Tombstones Across America
http://www.morbid-curiosity
Crematorium and Carabolia
http://www.angelfire.com/nc3/crematorium/torium
MORE TO
COME!
