(Originally posted on October 31, 2019)
Photos by Geoff Carter
By Geoff Carter
While driving around running errands this last Sunday, my wife and I found ourselves in the somewhat unusual position of having some time to kill, a strange situation for us. It was a beautiful October afternoon, sunny and seasonably mild. The leaves were nearly at their peak and some of the colors were breathtaking. We happened to be cruising down Bluemound Drive toward downtown Milwaukee, and I noticed we were coming up on the Calvary Cemetery and Mausoleum near the Story Hill Neighborhood. On impulse—partly because Halloween is coming up—I suggested to my wife that we stop and take a look around. She wasn’t exactly hot for the idea.
The cemetery is huge and very old, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. It is the oldest existing Roman Catholic cemetery in Milwaukee, consecrated in 1857, and is home to several distinguished Civil War veterans and some of the most notable names in Wisconsin history. And it’s big.
We parked and walked past the fantastical robin’s-egg blue Gothic Revival gatehouse and into the cemetery proper. A few other visitors, who mostly remained in their cars, were there, but for the most part, we had place to ourselves. I was struck by the size of the grounds, which I later learned consists of over 75 acres and is home to over 80,000 souls. A veritable metropolis of the dead. And, like any city, it has a defined social structure.
We walked past incredibly ornate memorials—thirty-foot obelisks, Romanesque mausoleums, intricately carved statues, and then, sprinkled between them, small weather-worn stones. Some were so old that the inscriptions and dates had been worn off by decades of exposure to the wind, snow, and sun. Only indecipherable indentations and bumps remained; these, I commented to my wife, had to have been erected by citizens who could only afford the limestone or sandstone memorials. Their names had dissolved as surely as their memories had faded into oblivion. The more ornate tombstones made of granite or marble are still as legible today as the day they were carved, preserving at least the names—if not the memories—of their dead for posterity.
As we walked past some more gravesites, Kris noticed that some of the larger and more ornate headstones bore family names. Scattered in front of them were the individual markers for family members. Some markers did not bear the posted family name.
“How,” she asked “did the survivors decide where the children go? Did wives go with their husband’s families or do they rest with their own parents?”
I said that I imagined the wives would go with their husband’s families, but that was pure speculation; I really have no knowledge of the ways of the dead. I wondered aloud if the placement had anything to do with how well one got along with the in-laws.
We saw a small worn limestone marker with a carved lamb adorning the top. No name was legible.
“That,” said Kris, “is the grave of a child, probably an infant.”
There were a fair amount of these markers, and sometimes in the adjacent space stood a gravestone bearing a woman’s name, a woman who was eighteen, nineteen, maybe twenty years old at the time of death. The babies sleep with their mothers—childbirth was a risky business back then.
The cemetery is home to some of the most celebrated names in Milwaukee history, including Frederick Miller, Solomon Juneau, and Patrick Cudahy. We went past the Cudahy mausoleum, a neo-classical sort of marble gazebo surrounded by the markers—and short biographies—of different family members. A gigantic obelisk bearing the name Mellen towered over the graves of its family members like a giant spear. A mausoleum shaped like a giant pyramid and adorned with a cross over the doorway bore the name McMahon. I couldn’t figure out the significance of a pyramid in a Roman Catholic graveyard. So I looked it up.
Apparently, Egyptian Revival Funerary architecture, which included our old friend the obelisk as well as the pyramid, was a fashion-driven extravagance of the American rich who wanted their memorials to resemble the monuments of the Egyptian pharaohs. Money talks—even from beyond the grave.
So these pyramids and obelisks and neo-classical Roman temples were indulgences of the very rich and powerful, monuments to capitalistic success and economic ruthlessness. And here at Calvary Cemetery, as in the cities of the living, the poor and meek get second or third best. Or worse. At least, I thought, everyone here has a stone. Many don’t.
And then I realized these cities of the dead are still constructed by the living, so of course the architects of these mausoleums would seek to maintain social conventions; of course the rich should have the largest and most ornate memorials. Of course the poor and middle-class denizens of the dead should have more modest monuments. This is what the living want.
But, I wondered aloud, who knows what it’s really like inside the city of the dead? Is there a social structure at work underground? If so, is it based on how much money you made while alive? I tend to think not. Of course, in a Catholic cemetery, you might imagine that all the souls have traveled (in a move reminiscent of white flight) in an upward direction. But maybe not. Maybe it’s simpler—and more democratic—than what we think. In a Milwaukee cemetery, maybe everyone is sitting underground playing sheepshead with their new neighbors—aces partners, of course.
I’ve always been drawn to the idea of the Mexican Dia de Los Muertos ceremonies in which family members visit relatives’s gravesites, construct altars, ofrendas, containing favorite foods and beverages of loved ones (and even toys for departed children), in order to encourage the souls of their loved ones to return for one night. In some Mexican cities, relatives spend the entire night at the graves of their loved ones, awaiting their return.
When my time comes, I’m not sure if I want to be enclosed in cement and covered with a giant pyramid. I think I’d be a little embarrassed by the extravagance. I do like the idea—if possible—of my life being celebrated by the living and their love of life. I’d rather have my family come to visit and for them to pour a Pacifico on my grave than to be covered with a two-ton stone angel standing on my head. I’d even enjoy a visit from the mother-in-law.