“ Every name I record is the title of a profound and glorious human story …”
My charge is to try to decipher and record for the future these time-battered inscriptions . I love this work , for it gives me a chance to keep faith with those of the past who met in grief , to bring to life the long-unheard voices of mourners who are themselves now gone .
Twenty-six years ago , during a stressful and sad time of caring for my Mother in her last illness , I began walking in the Cemetery . I went on some guided walks and spent more and more time on the beautiful roads and paths . I found solace and hope in the many loving commemorations I read on the monuments .
Then I learned of the inscriptions project and offered my time . Sitting on my folding chair in the sun and peering closely at the worn messages speaking the love and sorrows of the past seemed a meditative and important way to accept the changes to come in my own family . I began to feel that I was a living member of the Cambridge family of residents resting at the Cemetery .
By now I have recorded thousands of inscriptions . Maybe a hundred years from now , someone looking through the old files will see my signature on them , and think , oh , that ’ s that person who did all this work . I wonder who she was ?
A few months ago , Jennifer Johnston , Media & Communications Director at Mount Auburn , asked me if I would be up for writing what she called a long-form essay , about my several decades with the Cemetery . She said , “ You are one of the only people I can think of
who has been involved with so many facets of the Cemetery .” Oh , I thought . That is true . Well , yes , I will do that , I told her .
Since that invitation I have been thinking about how to organize the telling of my experiences and thoughts . Then the other day it came to me that the Cemetery is a place that looks inward — a place of mourning and grief , solace and contemplation and beauty — and a place that also looks outward , to the community around it , in a radiant and dignified way . So I could look inward and outward , in my telling .
So , for instance , Inward , to the animals who make their home in the Cemetery .
“ What ’ s a large brown animal ?” inquired my daughter Alyson , from her red folding chair on the other side of the monument she and I were working on .
“ How big ?” I asked , squinting at the front of the stone , trying to discern if that were a 3 or an 8 .
“ Well , bigger than a breadbox ,” said Als . “ It ’ s right behind you ,” she added .
“ Oh !! Oh ! That is a groundhog ,” I said . I turned and watched him as he disappeared into his burrow .
This groundhog was not , of course , my first wildlife sighting at the Cemetery . It is a refuge for creatures great and small .
Once a giant coyote , intent on some important errand , trotted briskly toward whatever it was , twenty feet from where I stood with my clipboard .
Five raccoon kits and mom hurried into some concealing shrubs next to my working place , and just down the way a glowing fox sunned himself on a hillside .
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