Category: Florida

Roselawn Cemetery, Tallahassee, Florida

A computer glitch kept me from my 2 usual posts last month. I just know I’m going to toss this thing in a dumpster one day. Now onto the post…

I don’t know many people that incorporate a cemetery visit into a girl’s weekend trip, but I did. As it turns out, the ladies that I was with had family members buried in Roselawn, and I really wanted to go and visit them. Jennifer’s mom and grandparents were in Roselawn, and Dawn’s mom was there. I remembered Jen’s mom and grandma, and certainly Dawn’s mom, Carol.

Jennifer’s Grandma Ernestine was a sweet woman, and she always believed the best of us, no matter what we did or how terrible it was. It was her husband that owned the enormous Buick Park Avenue that Jen learned to drive in, and that we all rode around in as kids. That thing could literally hold 8 of us comfortably. Even on this trip Jennifer drove; it’s in her blood since she’s literally been doing it since she was WAY under the legal driving (or learning) age. Grandpa had a lot of well-placed faith in her.

Dawn’s mom died suddenly in 2017 and we stopped first to see her. Before the trip we all trudged to Wal Mart to buy new flowers. Dawn’s mom loved hydrangeas, so we were looking specifically for those and thankfully, they had some.

We met Jennifer at Roselawn in front of Dawn’s family plot. Her mom had been cremated and Dawn had purchased a pretty marker for her, and she cleaned this carefully and then dusted the leaves off of the headstones of her other family members. She prepared the flowers, removed the old ones, and then set them up in the owl vase her daughter had chosen for the space. The rest of us loitered around, very conscious of the fact that there was nothing easy about coming out here or doing any of this. Mendy and I sat on a bench talking, enjoying the music from the wind chimes over our heads. It was a windy day and the sound was rich and vibrant on the spring breeze.

Dawn’s mom was funny and kind, and she drove us to school on many rainy or cold mornings, both in middle school and then later on when we went to high school, the same one she had also graduated from. Spending the night at their house mostly felt like home when I was a kid, and she created that feeling.

Afterward we went to see the Warner’s, Jennifer’s family, which were located closer to the back of the cemetery. When we were kids after a long night out we would sometimes drive out here around midnight or later for Jen to talk to her grandfather. This was before the cemetery was gated, before it became home to over 8,000 burials. Most of the time the rest of us would stay in the car while she sat on his grave for a few minutes. We would roll the windows down and listen to the crickets, and look cautiously around at the pitch black night that surrounded us in the big car. For the most part though, I always felt safe. It’s a beautiful place.

This time I placed flowers on Ernestine’s grave and told her that yes, that was Jennifer running down her road in the middle of the night once when we were in high school, and that yes, Jennifer had lied about it when asked. While we were up to no good that night as usual, we weren’t doing anything more serious than staying out too late.

Jen was still mad about the headstone that her brother had picked out for her mom, who was in the next plot. She gestured to it wildly and asked us what the hell we thought of it. (She phrased it just like that, which is why I’ve always liked her.) Here is Cheryl Warner Coker’s epitaph:

We do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest that have no hope.

For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 4-13-14

 

“What the hell is that?” she asked, gesturing again (this time I caught it on camera). We all slumped over, looking a little closer, waiting for the punchline. The truth was, none of us would have picked that for Cheryl’s marker. I think she would have been more suited to a song lyric from the 70’s rather than a long winded and particularly flowery Bible verse. My memories of her included music, cigarettes, and her laughter. Jennifer obviously thought her brother had not chosen appropriately, but there’s nothing to be done about it after all this time, and I still say when people are grieving they’re pretty much out of their minds for awhile. And that’s okay. Maybe that’s why he chose that inscription. At the time, it may have felt perfect.

Or he could have been trying to annoy Jennifer.

I know not many people would meet their girlfriends on a bright Saturday morning in a cemetery, but after being away from Tallahassee for over 20 years without going back, I wanted to see everybody, both alive and dead. We went by all of our old houses and were alarmed at some of the changes, especially Mendy’s, which was abandoned. We went by our old middle school and high school and took pictures. We did all of the things that you do when you come back to a place, all the while layering the present over the past by talking about kids, spouses, and jobs. Reminiscing wasn’t as painful as I’d thought it would be.

I was grateful for that.

I am giving my first talk about a cemetery in Tampa next week, so please quietly cheer me on from wherever you are. I’ll be talking to kids, so I’m pretty excited about that. Can’t wait to hear their questions!

 

 

 

Finding Bones in Cemeteries

 

The cemetery that I’m in the most is Page Jackson in Sanford, Florida. We (Gus and I) recently worked with the city and FPAN to start an Adopt a Cemetery project with them, hosting 4 clean-ups a year. Because some of the cemetery is under private ownership we will be focusing on the front section and the oldest, once called the Friendship and Union Cemetery. As soon as we have a date for our first clean up I’ll be posting, but we’re still ironing out details. However, we are VERY excited. (The section that I mention below is no longer safe to enter.)

Page Jackson is a cemetery that doesn’t follow a plan and it never has. It’s messy and sunken and doesn’t make sense. It’s horribly overgrown. In a place like that, I expect to see bones of some sort and it usually happens. We find them scattered around, almost always animal, but still always a shock when we see them. One day last year while we were walking the dirt road that curves around the cemetery we stopped and I picked up what I thought was an unusual rock, but when we looked a little closer it was actually bone. After a moment we photographed it and then tossed it back into the roadway, believing it was animal.

When I sent that photo to a friend that knows about osteological remains he asked me, “Where did you get this?” I told him. “That one’s human,” he said. As a result, I don’t toss them anymore, but instead photograph them in place and sometimes in my hand as well, and then put them right back where I found them. I keep flags in the car in case we ever find anything huge and obvious, but I’ve never had to use them. I use them for buried headstones and that kind of thing.

However, I always knew that there would be a day when I would see something so glaringly obvious in a cemetery that it would shock me. I’m a big believer in the Law of Attraction, and it seems to work with everything, including bones, because I see them all the time now in historic cemeteries. I think it’s like noticing any other thing in life, once you see it you start seeing it everywhere, whatever it is. (When I was looking to adopt a new cat all I saw were calico cats everywhere. It was like other types of cats didn’t even exist.)

On our visit to Carrolton Cemetery in New Orleans we split up, each holding an umbrella and both of us freezing but determined to check out the cemeteries. Carrolton has a lot of decayed vaults and I saw many that were caved in. I would look up, getting a feel for the way the vaults were made, and then I would look down, seeing what was in the rubble. It was a lot of slate roofing tiles and a lot of casket hardware from where they just collapsed when the roof fell. I loved seeing the hardware, I think it’s beautiful and it was interesting to see a few examples. I took a peek in one vault though and there was a rib. It didn’t exactly startle me, I just thought it was interesting. I didn’t touch it and kept walking.

A day later we went to St. Louis Cemetery Number 2, which is actually my favorite one in the city. In that one we saw a lot of bone fragments but nothing obvious, and I believed that some were most likely from animals as well. In that cemetery they seemed to be everywhere, which made it more interesting for sure. I was watching where I stepped the whole time.

On the last day we had 2 hours before we had to head to the airport for a very late flight. I was cranky and hungry, Shawn was trying to find a place to get food for me so I’d shut up, and he passed a cemetery we had gone by multiple times, but had not gone in. (I’d prefer not to say the name.) He asked if I wanted to go in, I said no. He turned in anyway and I asked what he was doing.

“Let’s just take a look, because you’re tired but I know you’ll regret it if we don’t at least look, so come on.” He parked and I got out without comment. I knew he was probably right.

I walked over to the right to look at a mausoleum. I was reading the names and dates and he suddenly appeared and asked me to follow him in a tight voice, so I did.

“Look,” he said, pointing to a grave.

I looked. We were standing by a family plot and right there on the ground, literally next to my foot, was what could only be a femur. And next to that, a hip socket. Then a piece of jaw. Then a vertebrae. It was like the person had been scrambled and thrown into the air for the parts to land wherever they fell. I just stood there, staring.

There were 3 places with bone debris in that cemetery. I’m not exactly sure how they came to have that many bones on the surface, but there they were. It wasn’t a situation where I felt compelled to take action, either, because the cemetery was scrupulously maintained and burials here are different. There wasn’t anyone hanging out, picking up bits and pieces and putting them in their trunk, and it was obvious that no one had been pulled from their grave or casket. The bones were just…there. No vandalism had taken place that I could see. While it wasn’t exactly unsettling,  it was surprising.

We looked quietly but didn’t say much or touch anything. On the way to the airport we were quiet. Both tired, both a little shocked. I have a couple of friends that will pick up anything, and I kept wondering what their reaction would have been. I didn’t feel any inclination to touch these at all.

I still wonder if I’ll react the same way if it ever happens again.

 

 

The Legacy of Traumatic Experiences

This month the trial for the widow of the Pulse shooter begins. Noor Salman pled not  guilty to all charges.

For Orlando residents this trial will bring forth a wave of memories that I’m sure many wanted to put behind them for good. The day I learned about the shooting I was sitting downtown with my fiancee at a Korean Restaurant waiting for the food to arrive, and I just sat there with tears running down my cheeks. I cried for the people who died. I cried for the people who lived. I cried for the police and investigators who had to walk into that crime scene and work. I could barely get myself together and could barely eat, and I haven’t been back to that restaurant since, just because I associate it with those feelings. (Nothing against them at all.) That whole day I just wanted to talk to my mom.

In 2011 when my coworkers and I were in the lobby at my job and a man was dragged in off the street, with his throat cut and bleeding to death, my thoughts later that week were that this was a temporary thing, a feeling that would go away and that we would all heal with time. In some ways I did, but I now recognize that kind of self talk as pure panic on my part. And I was panicking.

-I was afraid to go to work or walk into a public building for months afterward.

-I hired a therapist but found that once I was there I was unable to talk about what happened at all. I went for several months, but always talked about other issues in my life and skirted the big one.

-I was unable to tell my friends about what happened because they were so horrified when I did try to talk to them. My boyfriend at the time broke up with me two days after, because he apparently couldn’t cope.

-I had trouble eating for weeks and lost a lot of weight. I had insomnia and anxiety and ended up taking Xanax for 4 years.

-My mom did not know how to support me, but she managed when others could not.

-I am still afraid of large public buildings and feel scared to attend large events, including church services. I’ve learned to make myself do some things and decline others that I know will make me too nervous.

Even with one death, a lot of people were touched, and I was technically (physically) unharmed. There were the 6 of us working that night, plus my manager, the police officers, the paramedics, the man who brought him into the building (who continued coming in afterward but would never walk through the same set of doors again), the cleaning staff, the shitty counselor that my employer hired for (ONE) session as a group that we were required to attend, and then the friends and family of all the people there that night, plus our own doctors and therapists. This one death went on an on, and I didn’t even mention the victim’s family, or the man who committed the crime and his family.

I feel so much for people in recovery when they’ve been exposed to violence. I can’t even express how much it saddens me. To see it treated as a condition that you just get over, like having a bad cold, upsets me greatly.

I finally was able to talk about it almost 5 years later. It was in a group of my peers, and it was the scariest thing I’d even done- just articulating what happened that night and knowing that the people in the room would be horrified. Part of why I never talked about it was because I didn’t want to upset anyone else with that story. Instead, I was embraced and accepted, and ultimately, assisted.

I still know the man’s name and age when he died, and where he is buried. I know that he doesn’t have a headstone and that the cemetery he is in is not the best one in the area, since the owner died and there is no money for maintenance, so it falls to the city and their limited budget. He is in another state.

One of the men I worked with that night and I have kept in touch. His name is Brian. We both left that job within about a year of each other. It took us both awhile, each for different reasons. I started this blog and started visiting cemeteries as a hobby, and started advocating for one in particular that I felt for. My friend started a series of paintings and works of art that are dark and disturbing and make me feel uncomfortable to look at, but I love them. My favorite is a man with his features blurred, as though the paint ran unexpectedly or was smeared somehow. That painting makes me remember what it felt like to have something simmering inside me that I was unable to talk about. The feeling of being muzzled. I liked it that both of us took what we went through and did something to channel it. I wish I knew what happened to the other people who were there that night.

I should have talked to my therapist, but I’m glad that when I finally did talk about it all I was with such a supportive group of women. And my God, if you’re even in a situation to support a victim or a witness to violence, do it. Don’t act like it didn’t happen. Even if you just listen, it will make a difference.

As this trial begins I can’t help wondering how many people will support the families of the victims, the witnesses, and the officials who worked this crime; this mass shooting. The consequences of that one event will have repercussions that last for generations. Today you can still visit the building and see the memorial that people have created to the victims. Any time I drive by there are people standing there, thoughtfully reading the tributes

All photos of Pulse and the memorial set up in front of the building courtesy of Gus Leigh. You can read his work at this link.

 

 

 

Oakland African American Cemetery, Oakland, Florida

There are a lot of things about Orlando that I dislike, and sometimes progress is one of them. One morning when I was working at the Golf Channel I drove to work at 6:30 a.m. and saw a coyote walk out of the tall grass in a field across from our building and vanish into a nearby office complex. It was an interesting moment since I’d never seen a coyote before, and I sat in my car watching him intently. No one else was there. No one else saw it. And the next week the whole field had been mowed down and was now magically transforming into a storage facility for people to dump all of their crap that won’t fit inside their house.

Oakland Cemetery is facing similar circumstances when it comes to progress. Everything is happening around this site, and I’m not sure where the cemetery will fit in when the construction is completed. There are actually 2 Oakland Cemeteries, and when I saw the first one 2 years ago I thought I was in this one until someone told me recently that no, the other one was in the woods to the left, and that you had to just hike in.

Recently Shawn came home from work and picked me up, telling me he’d passed a cemetery we hadn’t been to yet and that he wanted to take me there. Guess which one it was? When we got to the site around 6 p.m. there were still a few construction workers milling around, but the cleared site is so immense that they never bothered us. They’re building something huge. The site starts right next to the first cemetery that I visited and is a desolate, open expanse of dirt until you look to the left and see an iron arch marking the entrance to the cemetery. We still had to hike over to it through the soft dirt, and then I jumped the fence to get in while Shawn looked around for another way. The arch said it was established in 1882.

At first I didn’t see anything noteworthy except for the fact that the site was heavily wooded and there were no markers. As I walked though I noticed a path and began to follow it. It dipped down into a little valley filled with all types of green ferns and oak trees dripping moss. because of the hour the moss was lit from the setting sun and looked like gold. It was a stunningly beautiful place for a cemetery and I stood there on the path for a few minutes, just looking around and taking in the beauty and odd peacefulness, since the cemetery is very close to the highway. After some time I began to see the odd marker here and there, nearly covered by ferns, and lots of white PVC pipe. In fact I was seeing it everywhere, and I know that each pipe indicated a burial. An archeology group had come out to work on the cemetery a few years ago and they marked the burials they could find with PVC. The Eagle Scouts have also at one time worked here, and from what I was able to find they were responsible for the arch and some previous clean up efforts.

The land was handed over to the city for maintenance and the chain link fence that surrounds the property was put up (there is an open entrance in the gate though, we saw it later on), but the fate of the cemetery is still unknown though it appears that they intend to leave it.

The cemetery is the resting place for many of Oakland’s founders, and also a lot of flu victims from 1918 are buried here. It hit this area particularly hard and many of the cemeteries in the area are a testament to this. It is believed that during that year up to 650,000 people died in America. The totals by state are staggering, and those numbers aren’t even certain. Most likely the numbers were higher. There is once cemetery on Orange Avenue here that is full of flu victims, and the cemetery is actually quite small. I remember reading one account of four funerals being held in one day. For a growing community it would have been devastating.

I used to feel extremely emotional over sites like this, still do sometimes. But I think after the past couple of years of looking for cemeteries that are long gone and doing a lot of reading that I feel more detached. You can stop people from doing what they’re going to do and doing it without regard for others. It’s the way things are now. It doesn’t make the site or the people buried there any less important. They’re still a part of our past and I hope this site will be preserved.

When we got back to the car Shawn spent a good five minutes pulling pernicious little stickers off of me. I was covered.

 

Association For Gravestone Studies Meeting

Have you ever wondered if there were other people who love cemeteries as much as you do? Have you ever wished that you could meet a bunch of them all at once and feel like you belonged?

Well, that wish can come true, my friend. Two weeks ago I went to the first meeting of the Florida Chapter for AGS. I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect, but I was at the last CRPT conference when a short meeting was held to see if there was any interest in starting a Florida chapter. Every person at the conference was interested. We all signed our names and info on a sheet to express our desire to start the chapter, and within a few months, it was done. Shelby Bender is our chapter president and not only did I recognize her at the meeting, but there were other people there from previous CRPT events. Because of that I felt comfortable right away an less like my shy, reclusive self.

When I got to the Alachua County Library in Gainesville I was about 30 minutes early. It was a chilly, overcast day and I walked two blocks to Starbucks to get something warm to sip on during the meeting. By the time I got to the meeting room there was a small queue of people waiting to sign in.

The library looks dull and beige-ly boring from the outside but the interior is gorgeous, with huge wooden beams overhead and a cool green color on the walls. It was a very soothing, grounding space and I thought regretfully of the 10 years that I spent in the Orlando Public Library, which always looked and felt like a prison to me. I know some people love Brutalist architecture and I think that’s great, so you go right ahead. The world needs all kinds of people.

There was a woman standing behind me in line as I waited to sign in and I turned to her and said, “This library is beautiful.” I was in awe of the meeting room, which had stained glass panels at the top of the room with a pattern that made me think of an eclipse. She smiled and agreed…and we’ve been talking ever since. I had met author and speaker Chris Kullstroem from Tampa, and I was in for an entertaining afternoon.

I was also thrilled to look up and see Keila and her fiancee walking in. I knew they were going to be attending the cemetery ramble afterward, but did not know they would be present at the meeting. We had to keep our chatter to a  minimum during the presentation but I’ll admit that I did pass a few notes. After the meeting and business at hand we met in Evergreen Municipal Cemetery for a walk and guided tour.

The cemetery covers 53 acres and was established in 1856 with the burial of a baby girl, Elizabeth Thomas, and then her mother 8 months later. She had given birth at 40, and I can only imagine what she went through in 1856. I actually did not know this at the time of our tour or I would have listened a little more carefully, but their marker is pictured below, carved by W.T. White. First burials are always a curiosity to me, since that seems to be what starts a cemetery most of the time, rather than land deeded or given specifically for that purpose. When the land was sold one acre remained a graveyard until the city purchased it in 1944, though there was a cemetery association in the 1890’s that managed the site. It now holds more than 10,000 people on it’s 53 acres, but Find A Grave lists a number in the nine thousands. The cemetery has a nickname, “The Wondrous Place”.

There are many notable burials here and our guide walked us through while telling story after story, but apparently one of our number was particularly offended by the fact that he left out a grave that she wanted to see, and she was pretty vocal about it. It was the grave of Robert Cade, the inventor of Gatorade. He had an unassuming grave near the roadway, and the guide pointed it out to her (it was so close we could read his name) but she continued complaining and at that point, I became offended as well. My cemetery zen only goes so far, apparently. It was the only thing about the day that irritated me.

We also learned that there was a notable stone mason who made several of the stones in the cemetery, W.T. White from Charleston, South Carolina. Headstones were delivered by bringing them along the coast and then up the St. John’s River to Palatka for delivery. I recalled hearing a similar story in St. Augustine in the Huguenot Cemetery about the headstones being made in Charleston and thought it was fascinating. White’s headstones can also be found in Tolomato Cemetery in St. Augustine. (See below.)

I also was very drawn to a headstone that said Our Mary, with a small, ghostly female image carved out of the stone. It had it’s hands held as if in prayer and a pale, pleading face tilted upward. It was simple and almost folksy in it’s style. I loved it.

I’d like to go back to this cemetery with just a couple of people so I could wander on my own and also check out all of the bells and whistles that they have- including an extensive audio tour with 38 places where you can listen to a recording about the person buried there. There is a tour brochure that you can download here.

All in all it was a great day with friends, and if you’re interested in joining your local chapter of the AGS or starting your own chapter please visit their website for more information. I’ll be cemetery hopping with Keila this spring, and reviewing one of Chris’s books on here soon, so there are adventures to look forward to. Also, is anyone going to head to that abandoned funeral home in Jacksonville with me or not? If you’ve been, please tell me. If you’ve been and were arrested for trespassing, please don’t comment. I don’t want to be anxious about going.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blue Graves In The South

I hope everyone had a beautiful Christmas and a Happy New Year!
I’ve been collecting photos for this post for some time, thinking that as the time passed I’d gather more information about this and have an awesome post to write.
But that didn’t really happen. Additionally, something is weird with my formatting for this post, so forgive me.
Blue grave sites in the south are still a bit of a mystery. I’ve heard several different reasons for painting the graves, and I will share all of them here. Special thanks to Dave Lapham for his help on this, and also to Barbara Broxterman, who offered a good deal of information as well.Barbara lives near and old (but still very active) cemetery in Levy County and was able to talk to some ladies who were there one day working, cleaning the graves. Apparently, they have a small business doing just that for other families who aren’t able to do the work themselves. I loved that.
Haint Blue, as it’s called, is a soft blue color generally found on porches in the Southern states. I never really noticed it until last summer when we were looking at houses in Sanford. Two of the homes that we visited had a gentle blue paint on the porch. I didn’t like it much though I did think it gave the porches a fresh, airy feeling. Shawn thought it was odd. Now that I know what I know, I’ll be adding blue to my porches this year.
The blue color is there because of Southern superstition. It is said to fool insects into thinking it’s an extension of the sky, so they’ll go elsewhere and not linger. It’s also said to drive away bad or evil spirits from the home. Both are positive reasons to add a little blue to your porch.
So why put blue on a grave? I know a lot of people believe that bad spirits linger in cemeteries and they would naturally want to protect their loved ones, so they’d paint the grave topper or ledger stone blue. In some cases the color can match the color of the house of the deceased or their families, and thereby continue to tie them to their home or make them feel at home in the cemetery. And then there was the more basic answer- that the paint is used to seal the cracks in the concrete. I guess that is possible too, but the paint is usually blue or white. I even noticed blue tiles in a mausoleum fountain, and even though blue is the usual color for that kind of water feature, I still felt it’s significance when you have to pass the fountain to approach the dead in the mausoleum.
This information made me pause to consider my own use of the color blue when it comes to visiting cemeteries. I have a favorite blue tee shirt that I usually wear, and my boots are blue. I wear blue shorts when I’m visiting a cemetery in hot weather, not because they’re blue, but because they fit well and I’m not worried about getting them dirty. If I was trying to protect myself in some way by doing these things it was done unconsciously.
I’ve noticed that in a lot of African American cemeteries that blue is a choice color for floral arrangements. I know this is sometimes done for men or boys, but it does seem to be very popular. What I do know is that once you start seeing blue in cemeteries, you’ll notice it everywhere.
While in New Orleans this past weekend we were fortunate enough to see the Weeping Angel in Metairie Cemetery, who is perfectly placed under 3 panes of blue stained glass, casting a moody light onto her. Aside from this mausoleum, there were many with blue glass throughout the cemetery, but to me she will always be the most beautiful with the most artfully arranged lighting.
Because I wasn’t able to find out much about this topic please share if you have more information! I’d love to hear some other ideas about why blue is so popular in cemeteries. Thanks to everyone who reads the blog, and I hope everyone has a happy and prosperous New Year!

Social Media, Blogs, and Death

Over the last few weeks my aunt has been sharing a blog on her Facebook page about a family with a newborn that was very ill. His name was Michael. He had a host of problems at birth, and each week or sometimes more often, his mom would write an update about his progress or his setbacks, what the next steps were, and the prayers that they needed for their family. I read all of the posts that my aunt shared, prayed for this child and this family, and somewhere along the way became emotionally invested in this family’s story.

I knew that Michael had a big day on Friday and that his parents were praying for a good outcome. It would be a step in the direction of having this little boy able to begin the process of healing rather than suffering. I prayed for him that morning, thought of him during the day, and went about my work. Michael had never been off of a machine to help him survive since birth. His mother couldn’t actually hold him. I hoped he would have some relief that day during the procedure and that this family would be able to see progress in their tiny son’s health.

On Saturday morning I reached for my phone and opened Facebook to find that Michael had died swiftly and painlessly the day before. I sat for a long time looking at that post by my aunt before putting my phone down and trying to start my day with some sense of normalcy, but I felt horrible. In the afternoon I went Christmas shopping by myself, and when I was about a mile from the house I started crying. The road became blurry, and I gave in to the tears.

I didn’t feel like I could cry at home about this. How do you tell the person you live with that you’re grieving for someone you didn’t know? I felt so strange. I knew that Michael was no longer hurting, and that death might have been the best way for that to happen. Based on his mom’s writing he would have had a life of surgeries and pain. No one wants that for their child, but they still want the child and the hope of well being for that child.

When David Bowie died I remember my roommate coming out of her bedroom crying the morning that it was in the news. I felt sorry for her, because I remember being very affected by Princess Diana’s death years ago. With a celebrity I could get it and not feel odd about being so sad. Their lives were always so public and they were always in the news, on TV, on magazine covers. But I still came back to the fact that I didn’t know this family except through social media.

Social media and blogs bring people together that would otherwise never know about each other. While I don’t care at all about what someone on Instagram wore on a specific day, I do care when they share something more personal. A feeling. A story. Why something matters to them. And I suppose that because of this constant sharing, grieving is now a public thing too. (Something Grace pointed out to me.) I thought back to times when people grieved as a nation over Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, Jr., or as a city recently when the Pulse shooting took place here in Orlando. I still can’t visit the part of the local cemetery where the victims are buried, even though I’ve been several times. I can’t think about it. I didn’t know any of those people either, but I finally gave myself a break over feeling so much emotion around that incident after talking to a friend and having her tell me she couldn’t go either, and that it upset her greatly to even think about going. I know that if I went no one would say anything to me if they saw me in the cemetery crying. So why did I feel so strange and so secretive about crying for a child I didn’t know? I honestly think I just didn’t want to explain that particular kind of sadness to anyone.

My friend and I are considering going to visit the Pulse victims at the cemetery this year, together. Maybe nobody owes the world or anyone an explanation of their sadness or despair. Maybe that’s what I haven’t learned yet. I can just be sad. I don’t have to explain it or rationalize it, or act like it’s not there.

I am grateful to Michael’s mom for putting their story out there for the world to see. I think it was a brave thing to do and I know it was hard to write. I hope her writing about Michael brings her healing and peace.

The photos in this post are of my favorite infant’s graves that I’ve visited in the last 2 years. The first photo, Billy, is from Greenwood Cemetery in Orlando and is one of my all time favorites.

Tampa Cemetery Tour With Grace

My auto correct automatically changed the word Grace to Grave. That seems to say a lot about my life, but I’m going to ignore it for now.

Grace and I jumped in the Jeep a couple of weeks ago and drove to Tampa with a full tank of gas and a bag full of snacks. We had a list of several cemeteries to visit, and we wanted to hopefully be heading back to Orlando before the traffic got out of control.

The first stop was Marti Colon. We spent a lot of time at this cemetery because we both loved it, and it was interesting for me to notice which grave sites Grace gravitated toward and pointed out to me. There are some stunning portraits here, so take your time looking.

The next stop was Centro Asturiano, the immigrant cemetery within the confines of Woodlawn for members of the local Spanish Club. It was here that I got a burr stuck underneath my toes, and I had to find a sturdy headstone to brace myself against while Grace got the evil little thing off of me. This cemetery is such a treasure; I love visiting. Here is where you’ll start to see the graves made out of blue and white tiles, and some with a wreath with a pink tile bow if the grave belongs to a woman or child. Many of the ones in here are still in excellent shape, though there is a considerable amount of damage at the front of the cemetery.

After this- Woodlawn. We drove though and got out to visit the Hampton plot, and also to get a better look at a few portraits on the headstones. This cemetery is enormous and one you could easily spend the day in, with lots of mausoleums for added interest. Since we don’t see many of them around here they always draw me to them and yes, I peek in windows.

A quick stop for drinks and a snack- then Robles Cemetery and it’s 26 burials. This cemetery was one that I feel literally too intimidated to write about. It’s small, uncared for, clearly ignored, and suffering damage, but the history of this family is fascinating and the story is so good, I know I can’t do it justice. Check the link for the contributions they made to Central Florida.

Next- La Unione Italiana and Cento Espanol next to it. La Unione was the site of a break in in 2016 where several caskets (including the bodies) was stolen from one of the mausoleums. I didn’t see any evidence of damage, thankfully, but I felt terrible for the family. There was a descendant living and a reward was offered, but I never heard anything else about it. Grave robbing is still a very real event and it literally happens all the time. It saddens me and makes me angry because I just don’t get it, and I don’t understand how profitable it can actually be. Definitely something for another blog post, and if you have ever witnessed anything like this please reach out to me on here. I’d like to hear your experiences.

While we were there Grace said she wanted a picture of what she kept referring to as “Anchor Jesus”. We walked toward a huge statue and stood at it’s feet, both squinting up at it.

“I don’t think that’s Jesus,” I said.

“Who would it be?” she asked, taking photos.

I looked it up when I got home. It’s a statue of Hope, which is often depicted with a large anchor and a star. The anchor motif is popular in coastal cities, and Tampa does have a number of anchor symbols on grave markers. I especially love this beautiful statue, she’s on the right side of the main aisle (If you’re facing the gates) when you visit, but you can’t miss her.

At the Spanish Cemetery next door I stayed in the car with the A/C running while Grace ran around. I don’t like the feeling of that cemetery at all, I feel like someone is throwing a heavy, wet blanket of grief onto me when I’ve gone in before. No thanks. The funny thing is, she came over to my car door and I rolled the window down, smiling and asking her what she thought about the place.

“This one doesn’t feel right,” she said musingly, and got back in the car a few minutes later.

We planned to end our day with Orange Hill, which is the less prim and proper cousin of Myrtle Hill next door. Myrtle Hill is the fine wine of active cemeteries in Tampa. It is very grand, very large, and very beautiful. Orange Hill, however, has it’s charms. One is an empty mausoleum that you can pop your head into to look around, and another is a huge and strange building at the front with no discernible purpose. I did some digging online and can’t figure out if it’s a funeral chapel or something else, it seems way too large to be a mausoleum. Grace sent a photo to her girlfriend and got this gem in response:

On the way out of Myrtle Hill we noticed a memorial park across the street and decided to drive through for a minute, but it turned into a lengthy adventure. First, it has a huge columbarium in the middle of it that has some interesting architecture and we decided to get out and go peek. We found the doors to the chapel area open and walked inside, and then Grace covered her face with her tee shirt because the SMELL was unbelievable. I mean, BAD. I thought about either backing out of the doors or gagging, but the inside was so interesting that I swallowed hard and walked farther in. After a few minutes I had to leave, but kept looking around for a source of the smell and could only see a few spills on the floor that had dried and were crawling with small bugs. I have no idea what happened in there. Grace said it smelled like the craft supplies that had been stored for a year in a mildewed closet at at Bible Camp. I had nothing to compare it to, but I’ll say again that I hate smells in cemeteries.

I’m encouraging everyone to get to Tampa and take a cemetery tour of your own design. We really had a stellar day, and went home in horrible traffic (we didn’t avoid it after all) full of French fries and caffeine and covered in bug bites.

 

 

Moultrie Church in St. Augustine, Florida

This little church is stunning and was built in 1877, when the graveyard (called Wildwood Cemetery) was already existing. It was originally a Southern Methodist church, then non-denominational, and then finally Catholic, with the first Catholic mass held in 2014. The church has been transformed through the years as the church population declined, until now when it’s essentially opened for special services and occasions.

A couple began taking care of the church and grounds in 2004. Mr. and Mrs. Tindell started caretaking for the cemetery, recovering buried stones and maintaining the grounds before finally gaining permission to care for the building as well. The grounds are impeccable, with some of the cleanest and most pristine old headstones I’ve seen in this area. Some of the unusual features are toward the back of the cemetery, so be sure to walk all the way through and head toward the woods.

Propped against a tree you’ll find a wooden marker. Sadly, it can no longer be read, and most wooden markers tend to fall over due to the moisture at the base rotting the wood, but I still love seeing them! There is also a handmade headstone from 1960 for a C.R. Cooper that looks like molded concrete with turquoise paint layered over the scratched letters. The font for the name is lovely and has a little flourish on the C. It looks like it was written in the wet concrete with someone’s finger and I love the idea of that.

 

In the far corner is an odd section that I approached, thinking at first that it was a small area for families to sprinkle cremains, but that isn’t what’s going on there. It was actually a family plot for a husband and wife, and aside from the angels and trinkets, there were also lots and lots of oyster shells. I’ve seen so many conch shells in the African American cemeteries that I frequent, but the oyster shells were new to me. If anyone knows the significance, please reach out to me here on the blog. I’d appreciate it! I know seashells can be used as a way to mark a visit to a loved one’s grave, similar to the Jewish tradition of leaving a pebble. The conch usually signifies the trip homeward for the person buried there, a way of being carried back across the sea. I’ve even heard that the conch, if whole, can hold the soul of that person. I never touch them when I visit cemeteries, but I do take a peek to see if they were sourced (they’ll have a small hole in the shell) or collected naturally.

Definitely go to this cemetery if you get the chance, it’s lovely.

Also take a minute to look into your local chapter for the Association of Gravestone Studies. I joined the Florida chapter about a month ago and got my first newsletter the other day- it had so much information in it- I loved going through all of the articles. If you’re interested in joining you can find them on Facebook. Their annual conference is in June so mark your calendars!

Meanwhile, I’m sitting here in the dark watching Britcoms because it’s the first day of daylight savings time and Shawn is also out of town. The house seems very quiet. Grace and I are heading to Tampa this week to revisit some favorite cemeteries and I’m sure hilarity will ensue. We have a big list to get through so I’m just hoping for the best, though I was hoping for cooler weather. Florida decided to spoil us for a week with evening temps in the 50’s and then ruin it all over again the next week with our usual heat. Oh well. There’s a lot to be grateful for right now, including the fact that my cat now has her paw in my water glass.

Happy daylight savings, everyone!

 

 

American Ghost Adventures in Greenwood Cemetery

Shawn surprised me for Halloween. He booked us for a ghost tour in Greenwood Cemetery, and I was under the impression that it was the moonlight walking tour I’d been on many times before. However, this one was different. When we arrived at the cemetery just after dark we were issued K2 meters and presented to our guides for the evening, Mark and Debbie, both sporting Victorian attire.

They pretty much had me right there with just the clothes and the meters, and we weren’t even IN the cemetery yet. Debbie wore a hat with a double veil and I was really impressed with her ability to lead the tour and see so well. She looked fetching. And I really love Victorian dress on men. Something about those coats….

We began with our group of eight by the offices, where we were shown the area that used to be the African American Jonestown settlement when Orlando was all about celery and citrus. Many of the workers were former slaves and they lived here. Several people from the Ocoee race riots are buried here in the original segregated part of the cemetery, with well visited and tended graves. I remember stumbling on their funeral records in the Carey Hand books once and being startled by reading about such a violent death when many of the other records said things like, ‘senility’, or ‘heart attack’.

We then proceeded up the hill to the highest point by the Wilmott Mausoleum, which I love for it’s creepy, domed, paint peeled beauty. It’s close to the Carey Hand family plot, so I gave them a nod on the way past as I always do, still thinking that a book about that family would be so much fun to write.

It was here that Mark and Debbie brought out a flashlight and placed it on top of the Robinson grave in the off position. It was also here that it began to rain and the umbrellas came out, and thunder rolled across the sky. I was thinking that there was nowhere else I’d rather be in that moment when the flashlight began to blink and flash, and Mark and Debbie began talking with a spirit.

Do I believe I ghosts? Yes. Do I go looking for them? Normally, no. This is only my second ghost tour, and while I believe they’re around us all the time, the skeptic in me does rear it’s shaggy head at times. But strangely, this was not one of them. The little flashlight blinked on and off, once for yes and twice for no, and eventually it came out that were were in the presence of a young boy who really wanted to chat. I think we were there for at least 20 minutes, and while I would never do something like that myself, I did like witnessing the whole event. I feel safe in cemeteries. But I know that a lot of people don’t and that there are many who would have been upset by something like that.

We went to visit Fred Weeks by his mausoleum for another show with the flashlight. Fred Weeks was a man who knew how to get revenge with grace and style. When he was ripped off by 3 businessmen in the Orlando area he erected a headstone with their names on it by the front gates of Greenwood with a bible verse,  Luke 10:30. When the men bought back the swampland they had sold him in order to get him to take the headstone down, he built his mausoleum, and put their names on it instead. On the doors you can see where the names were removed. Mr. Weeks died alone; his wife left him and took the children with her so he’s in the mausoleum all by himself. It’s a good story, but just goes to show you that seeking  revenge hurts you as well as the other person. On most of my visits to Greenwood there is a flower on Fred’s door. I always wonder who leaves them.

Toward the end of the tour it was raining in earnest and we stopped briefly at Babyland 3. I took a few photos but mostly hung back. When they tried to get interaction with the flashlight again nothing happened. The babies were all resting peacefully tonight.

A few days later Shawn and I went back to Greenwood to look at some of the places we had stopped on the tour, and as we drove past Babyland there was a couple sitting together on one of the little graves. I’m pretty sure my heart just fell out of my chest because I felt so heartbroken for them.

At the end of the tour we went back to the cemetery office, where I bought a tee shirt and handed Mark my card, asking him if it would be okay if I wrote about the tour on the blog.

“Yes!” he said. ‘Will you write nice things?”

“Of course!” I replied.

“And will you tell them how good looking and single I am?” he asked me.

“Yes, I will,” I said. And I’m keeping my promise.

So lookout, ladies! If you like history and have a thing for men in bowler hats, he’s your man. You can take a tour with American Ghost Adventures here in Orlando- I’m definitely taking one of the city tours so I can learn more about some of the buildings downtown. Check them out on Facebook for upcoming dates and events!