Until recently I have never been a fan of cemeteries… and as a kid I believed them to be scary places to be avoided. However, if one has family in residence it becomes more difficult to avoid visitation on special occasions such as Mothers,Veterans, Birthday days etc… I can avoid it but it haunts me all day so why not swing by and pay respects. So off I go flowers in tow down to Cambridge to clear my conscience…and feel like a good boy.
In North Cambridge there are two cemeteries directly across from one another, the Cambridge Cemetery and the Mount Auburn. I guess you could compare the two as the Holiday Inn vs the Ritz. My family stays in the Cambridge Cemetery (Holiday Inn) side of the street while celebrities on the Ritz side …such as poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, inventor of the Polaroid Camera Edwin H. Land, Senator/Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge and Christian Science Church founder Mary Baker Eddy round out their neighborhood.
As a kid I’d heard all about the spooky rumor of a telephone installed in Mary Baker Eddy’s tomb at Mount Auburn Cemetery. I later learned that while the rumor is false, it seems to be based on circumstances after her death on December 3, 1910.
Following Eddy’s funeral on December 8, her casket was kept in Mount Auburn Cemetery’s Receiving Tomb until her palatial grave site could be made ready. To protect against vandalism, the casket was guarded around the clock.
A telephone was installed for the guards’ use, but was removed after the casket was transferred to the grave site in January 1911.
So a telephone was never permanently installed in Mary Baker Eddy’s grave or in the tomb/memorial that was eventually erected there but, that didn’t stop us from spreading the rumor… it was too good a story.
It was an interesting story to talk about as a kid but I wondered who would have paid the phone bills, what would you be calling to ask about and was it a party or private line? Back in the day we had a party line where you had to wait till the line was free to use it. I suppose if someone did answer it could be a long time before they gave up the line… Just think about who you could be sharing that line with up there….I don’t think I’d have had the courage to call that phone as a kid then or even now…. Let sleeping dogs lie or no news is good news as they say.
My mom, dad, brother aunt and uncles are buried in the Cambridge Cemetery. Mom and Aunt Evelyn’s grave is on one side near the river and the boys are in the Military section near the road.
As I roam about trying to locate the boys markers I spot many names from my childhood which paint pictures of the characters that made up our close knit community. Their memories make me laugh… They remind me of my favorite epitaphs …
- Here Lies John Yeast – “Pardon me for not rising”
- Spanks – “Arthur Spanks …his wife Katherine”
- BUTT – “Think of me and smile”
- “Rest in peace Cousin Huet, we all know you didn’t do it”
- Rodney Dangerfield – “There goes the neighborhood”
- “Here lies the body of Johnathan Blake …stepped on the gas instead of the brake”
- “She always said her feet were killing her but nobody believed her”
Shakespeare’s epitaph was thought to have been written by the Bard himself to prevent his corpse from being dug up for research purposes, which was commonplace at the time. So far, his warning seems to have worked.
“Good friend for Jesus sake forbeare, To dig the dust enclosed here. Blessed be the man that spares these stones, And cursed be he that moves my bones.”
I guess if you gotta go out ….you might as well go out leaving them smiling. If you had to write your own epitaph what might yours say? Would it be funny? Would you leave a coded epitaph that spells out a word, a riddle or a message about a secret hiding place or clues about a family secret?
I think I’d like leave something that prompts a quick chuckle… something like the following:
Whomever shall tell my life story ….Please end it with an exclamation point. Something simple,short and sweet…elaborate if you must … such as….Life Well Don!
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