from Nonna

Nonna hated being photographed.

 

Because I cannot remember, I have to sift through old emails to find out the name of the cemetery where she is buried.

 

I have not visited her grave after her death.

 

It is in Racine County, Wisconsin: Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery and Mausoleum.

 

When we were young, my mom would take us there to visit our grandfather’s grave.

 

Nonna is buried next to him.

 

Holy Cross is not a very attractive cemetery.

 

I prefer Victorian park cemeteries, which are always full of trees and ponds and shade and elaborate markers.

 

We often visit cemeteries like this in Chicago.

 

We visit Graceland and Rosehill and the Bohemian National Cemetery.

 

Holy Cross is very much a post-war cemetery: little shade, few trees, huge lawns, low markers.

 

I remember it being very bright and very hot, as we ran around in our little pink shorts, leaping over graves.

 

Here is a picture of the grave.

 

This picture was taken in autumn, and it’s available online from findagrave.com.

 

Nonna’s name and her dates of birth and death are carved into plain granite stone.

 

The stone also includes the name and dates for her husband.

 

He died in 1979.

 

She died in 2016.

 

I was mistaken: the photo was not taken in autumn.

 

The photo was taken on March 12, 2018.

 

I assumed it was autumn because of the yellow-brown grass and the leaf litter.

 

The colors in the photograph are very brown: brown leaves and brown grass.

 

A cross entwined with roses is also carved onto the headstone.

 

Next to the stone sits a metal emblem indicating that my grandfather was a veteran of World War II.

 

From the website you can download the photo, which I did.

 

I thought I might be able to learn more about the photographer.

 

However, I could not.

 

Under the “Edit” function for Preview, the user is offered the ability to insert “Emojis & Symbols.”

 

I tried to insert a smiley face emoji with heart eyes, but I couldn’t make it work.

 

Looking at this headstone, I am startled to rediscover my grandfather’s age when he died.

 

He was only 60: 1919–1979.

 

I think this marker must be near an evergreen bush or pine tree.

 

At the foot of the marker are bits of dry and brown evergreen needles.

 

There may be pine cones, too, but they may also be hens and chicks.

 

The closer I look, the more I think they are hens and chicks.

 

I also see old yellow stalks from long-rotted flowers and crumpled maple leaves.

 

Nonna was cremated.

 

A jar with her ashes is buried here.

 

My grandfather was not cremated.

 

He was buried whole.

 

Victorian funerals were home funerals, and cremation was uncommon, only emerging late in the century as a feature of the broader reform and spiritualist movements.

 

Victorian bodies were whole and were kept in the family parlor, waiting burial.

 

Photographs were often taken of bodies in coffins propped in these parlors.

 

Multiple photographs of at-home child funerals are included in Wisconsin Death Trip.

 

All of them are shocking, but I find the first photograph to be the most shocking.

 

This photograph captures a spare room with an unfinished pine floor.

 

A man is standing in front of a heavy wooden door.

 

The man wears trousers, suspenders, a crumpled white shirt, and a cravat.

 

A silver watch chain makes a silver arc under his belly.

 

His shoulders and face are completely covered in shadow.

 

He holds a white strip of fabric, and he faces a lidless coffin that has been propped against the wall next to the heavy wooden door.

 

The girl inside is dressed all in white, and flowers have been perched under her chin and in her left hand.

 

The first crematory in the United States was opened by Dr. Francis Julius LeMoyne.

 

Dr. LeMoyne was born September 4, 1798, exactly one month before the publication of Lyrical Ballads.

 

Dr. LeMoyne was an abolitionist and radical reformer, and he ran for governor of Pennsylvania repeatedly throughout the nineteenth century.

 

“It was on this three-story garden that young John LeMoyne, sent there by his father, stood ready with a pole to shove over a hive of bees in case an angry mob in front of the house should break through the line of the guards to stop the Rev. Mr. Gould, an early abolitionist, who was speaking in Dr. LeMoyne’s yard against slavery.”

 

That last quotation comes from ourfamilyhistories.com, a marvelous blog, which is maintained by cousins Helen S. Durbin and Susi C. Pentico.

 

In the corners of the blog’s front page are animated spiders that drop down from little webs.

 

Dr. LeMoyne believed in cremation as a sanitary practice.

 

He was concerned for the groundwater, which he believed was being poisoned by the burial of the dead.

 

Dr. LeMoyne opened the crematory on his own property because the local leaders objected to his attempt to do so in the town’s cemetery.

 

The first body burned in his crematory was the Austrian Theosophist Baron de Palm, whose funeral drew thousands of curious onlookers.

 

The ceremony was held in a Masonic temple in New York City and was officiated by Colonel Henry Steel Olcott.

 

The New York Times covered the funeral, and the correspondent transcribed the prayer given by T. Frederick Thompson.

 

The prayer partly reads, “We praise and bless the changing empire of created light, of shadows and of reflections, and of images: and we incessantly aspire toward thy immovable and imperishable splendor.”

 

Olcott arranged for the body to be embalmed and shipped to Pennsylvania.

 

Embalming was also a radical and unusual practice at the time.

 

The Baron’s body was shipped by rail.

 

Here is a sepia photograph of LeMoyne’s crematorium.

 

The building sits on a hill.

 

The hill was named “Gallows Hill” because it had been the site used to hang convicts.

 

The top of the grassy hill climbs just behind the little brick building.

 

Four wintry trees rise up spindly across the top of the hill, moving away from the brick crematorium.

 

The building is surrounded by a picket fence, and a little paved path leads up to it.

 

The roof is white, and three brick chimneys poke out of the top: two on one side, one on the other.

 

A pair of doors with little steps adorns the building’s front.

 

In the 1876 New York Times article covering the cremation, the writer indicates that these doors lead to two separate rooms: “the reception room and the furnace room.”

 

Dr. LeMoyne is visible standing in front of the leftmost door.

 

He wears a black hat and coat, and he is holding a cane.

 

In his “The Cremation of Baron De Palm,” Stephen R. Prothero summarizes the scene of the baron’s cremation: “About an hour into the proceedings a rose-colored mist enveloped the body. Later the mist turned to gold. Meanwhile, the corpse became red-hot and then transparent and luminous.”

I assume that Nonna, too, became rose-misted, golden, red-hot, transparent, luminous.