If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

Cemeteries are not all alike.

Times change, and customs change concerning how human bodies are disposed of after death. And at any given time, a variety of preferences in “final resting places” can be observed in different cemeteries.

There’s the typical “granite orchard” cemetery, with row upon row of tombstones. There are cemeteries that boast mausoleums in addition to in-ground graves. There are burial places where only plaques, level with the surrounding green space, identify the occupants of the graves.

An innovation two or three generations ago was the Forest Lawn or naturalized burial place, which looks like countryside or parks, with meadows, trees here and there, flowering shrubs, patches of flowers, little brooks, paths. This type of cemetery was mentioned recently at a cemetery association meeting.

Another less conventional resting place is a columbarium, or set of chambers for urns or chests containing ashes. As cremation becomes more frequently the choice of individuals in their planning, or of families left to make the choice, there is a growing demand for resting places scaled to urns or chests.

Not every cemetery has the space or the appropriate terrain to provide a naturalized area. Not all have space for a mausoleum. But most would have enough room for a columbarium. I know of one cemetery in the county that has added one, but I believe there will be more.

Why the fancy name for what is in effect a miniature mausoleum, typically much less imposing, and scaled to house cinerary urns rather than coffins? It’s Latin for “dovecote.”

Which kind of place would be most fitting for a given person’s resting place? That probably depends on how that individual lived, his or her work and interests and personality. Also, it depends on family wishes and where a mate or other dear one is laid to rest or plans to be.

A longtime reader sometimes prompts me to “write one of your Jim Bishops, like the one about the wild violets or the old fellow from the hospital.”

I am writing this on a day that used to be designated Decoration Day, and later was the standard date for Memorial Day until that was attached to weekends. It is also the birthday of my cousin Prudence, who is no longer here to celebrate with. Her cinerary urn was placed at in the Portage Valley Cemetery a week ago, according to her wishes, with great care and many loving memories.

A person who had such a passion for growing things, and country, and the beauty of nature, as Prudence had might have considered a Forest Lawn type place, if one were available. But her love of family probably influenced her to choose a setting near her parents and other kin.

That reader’s mention of the “old fellow from the hospital” tells me that some may be interested in that story, told in some earlier columns over the years.

Claude was a very ill man I met when my father and he were patients in what was then Roswell Park Memorial Institute. Dad had become acquainted with Claude, and suggested that I visit him.

Claude’s dark skin was stretched over his bones and sinews tightly, with scarcely any muscle and surely no fat left. Staff could scarcely find veins to keep him hydrated, medicated or nourished.

He didn’t know his age or his birth date. He had always worked, he said, and didn’t recall going to school. He had had a wife and a daughter—he had letters from his daughter, and a photo of a woman in her twenties. The letters were old and worn. He thought she might have moved since she had written them.

“If you would write and let her know where I am--?” he suggested. “Maybe they will send it on to where she is now.”

So I would read the letters to him, and write letters to his daughter. “I don’t want her to be fussed,” he would say. “Tell her I am doing okay.” The letters came back as undeliverable; we did not tell him.

Claude told me stories about his days as a migrant worker and working on the docks. There had been a fight with another laborer and he had been stabbed in the back. “I think that’s why I got this trouble,” he said. “He cut my back and did something to my lung.”

He could eat candy bars, amazingly enough, a few a day. “Some calories,” a nurse said.

In the evening a young man made respiratory therapy rounds. He looked a little like Harry Belafonte, but sounded like Sam Cooke as he sang softly, wheeling his cart through the hallways.

What would Claude like him to sing? he would ask, as he set up the apparatus. Claude liked Stephen Collins Foster songs. “Swanee River”, “Old Kentucky Home,” he mentioned. “And the one about old Joe, all his friends be gone now.”

So the respiratory therapist did his best for Claude. The young man didn’t know those songs until my dad played them to him on his accordion and wrote the words for him.

When I was home I would call Roswell frequently and talk to Dad, and sometimes would just call to get a condition check on Dad or another patient. One day when I called and asked after Claude, the person who took the call told me, rather formally, “Mr. [Jay] has expired.” I asked her when, and what arrangements had been made.

Well, they had no “person to notify” on record, so “He will be held for 30 days. There is a disposition for those that are unclaimed.”

I had told a friend in the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene about Claude, how ill and alone he was. Now I told him that Claude had died, so alone at the end of his life there was no one to mourn or to claim him.

Months later I was in Buffalo on news and New York State Association for Retarded Children business. My friend said he had something to show me, and drove me to a Forest Lawn setting.

At a pastoral spot where the ground had been disturbed and artfully restored, there was a new plaque. It bore Claude’s name and date of death, and these words referring to the lyrics of “Old Black Joe”: Gentle voices called.

Peace.