Sweet Auburn

Another joint blogging entry for the Ecotone Wiki on Cemeteries and Place.

DocRock has written about the fun involved in wandering around cemeteries, mostly in connection with the stories that are told-and made-in these places. My own passion for cemeteries originated in a passion for birds, which are often found in profusion in cemeteries, where there are often trees and water, just the thing for a 2-ounce warbler exhausted by the northward migration. Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge is full to bursting with birders in May, but since they mostly arrive at 6:00 am and leave to go to work by 8:00, they don’t get in the way too much of mourners.

Hanging around gravestones for this long was bound to have an effect on me, though, and like it or not, the stories started coming. Here’s one I haven’t finished telling, yet. Lizzie died in 1869. Her stone bears the inscription “Lizzie.” (period at the end) with a garland of flowers. On the back of the stone is more information: Lizzie died a few days after giving birth to a son, Matthew; he died a month later and is buried with her. Her husband and parents lie nearby; also Lizzie’s sisters, and her husband’s new wife.

So my made-up add-on to this rather sad tale (her father’s memoirs are in the Law Library here at Davis, he being a Somewhat Important Person, yet he never mentions her at all) is that, in fact, she didn’t really love the man she married; she was torn between two brothers, who are buried up the hill where I saw my first ever Cape May warbler, and who both got killed (really, not fictionally) in the Civil War. At left is a drawing of the effigy of their dog, a sculpture encased in glass. The dog has no name; the inscription simply reads “Their favorite.” Period. It’s hard from three thousand miles away, but someday I mean to finish this novel.

For now, though, the verb “to Lizzie” means to wander around a cemetery, usually Mount Auburn, where the focus is NOT birds. (I peek anyway.)