Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Inspiring All Who Visit | Page 9

Mount Auburn
Dylan Fulton, Grade 11

To every life, there is a beg inning, middle, and
end. All lives, all the different stories, end the same. They end
with death, the equalizer. Their souls go somewhere beyond,
while their loved ones wait, mourning, until their reunion.
In the meantime, their graves act as an intermediary between
the passed and the living. Their graves are placed among
their deceased brethren in cities of the dead, the cemeteries.
Love is the strongest human emotion, but even love bows
down to death. Death is the only force strong enough to
break the bonds of love. Death is one of the strongest forces
known to man, but it is far from invincible. For death only
kills the body, not the name. The living hold onto the
names and, in an effort to protect them, honor the names
of the deceased in their tombs, their crypts, their eternal
beds, in cities of the dead.
To break the bonds of love’s camaraderie is to evoke a pure
sadness. Being the breaker of love, death leaves sadness in its
wake. It is natural, then, that our views and representation
of death reflect that sadness. The cities in which we place
our dead are often void of happiness. These somber cities
are coated in gray, but not a gray of cities, nor the gray of
granite markers. No, this is the gray of emptiness, a fog of
sadness. The green of grass, even rainbow of bouquets, are
dulled in these dead metropolises. They become more of a
place of sadness, and lose their purpose of remembering the
deceased. The living, not being fans of sadness, avoid these

lifeless towns. The dead stay unvisited, and die their second
death, a death from being forgotten.
There are countless numbers who have succumbed to
their second death, all lined up in neat little rows. We must
respect the dead and death, lest we too die twice. With such
goals in mind, we must take seriously the idea of death,
which often permeates the air with sadness and discomfort,
both of which are unpleasant to the living. As such, the
places we create to honor and remember the dead do the
opposite, and only serve as a dumping ground for the bodies.
It is clear then, that a balance is needed, a place that will
honor the dead but will also leave the living uplifted. It was
this goal that illuminated the hearts and minds of a few
wise citizens from an early Massachusetts. They brought
life to a place of death, so that members of both existences
can enjoy. Those wise men were the founders of Mount
Auburn Cemetery. For there is no other cemetery in the
continent, or even the world, that can hold a candle to it.
To even call it a cemetery is to undermine its true beauty.
It is, as it has always been, a place of rejuvenation and of
final rest.
In Mount Auburn, death and its sadness is not the
dominant emotion. No, for the rolling hills do not allow
for the fog of sadness to settle. The gray emptiness cannot
mask the hues and colors from the flora that inhabit this
land. It is in Mount Auburn that life plays an equal part, if
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