Being buried at Mt. Auburn does not appeal to everyone: it is an eternal association with identity as a Bostonian, Cantabrigian, or Harvardian. “I’ve given my life to Harvard. I do not wish to give my body to Harvard,” said the late Reverend Peter J. Gomes, and, true to his word, he was buried in Plymouth, Mass. last year.
DISINTEGRATE TO DIRT
As I walk down the winding paths of Mt. Auburn, my mind is not cycling through its usual rote to-do list. If I lay down on the grass, I would fall into a Rip van Winkle-esque sleep. Each poem or simple epithet seems to take on weighty significance, and the leaves look so sharp that I feel like my seven-year-old self receiving my first pair of glasses.
Mt. Auburn and cemeteries like it were created to stop the outside world of cities and politics from destroying the land’s beauty. They were meant to be visited, to be admired, to inspire comfort in those who sought it. However, it preserves not only a beautiful forest but also peace in an urban setting.
The City of the Dead creates a feel of connection with nature that relationships with people sometimes cannot provide. During my hours at Mt. Auburn, it seemed inappropriate to check my phone, to think about classes, to plan my day, to text my friends. I thought of the hourglass with wings on the wall of the Granary and asked myself if I was in the past—is this feeling provoked from the wishes of the original cemetery architects, or is this something new? How do we view death as a society now, and what will historians say about how people used Mt. Auburn today a century from now?
Part of the future may include an integration with nature even more complete than the early 19th-century movement. “We’re entering a new, naturalistic way of viewing cemeteries,” says Harvey. “Many of the more recent cemeteries preserve the landscape entirely, working with memorials placed on level with the ground. Many people are also interested in the green burials and prefer to be buried in a simple pine coffin or in a shroud.”
On the surface, green burials and burial grounds are strikingly similar. Both places deemphasize the importance of the individual and his or her life. In each case, the core of the ritual is placing a body, unadorned, in the ground, for it to disintegrate eventually into the dirt. Though these are similar goals, the motivations behind them are entirely unrelated. The Puritans disregarded the individuality of the dead as a part of their religious beliefs; those who choose green burials take a similar attitude based on their beliefs about nature. Thus, the constructed elements of graveyards have no single meanings in and of themselves; rather, we appreciate their tranquil beauty according to their unique historical context.
—Staff writer Christine A. Hurd can be reached at churd@college.harvard.edu.