Posted in Cemetery Sculpture, Symbolism, tagged alpha and omega, buffalo, cleveland, forest lawn cemetery, grave art, lake view cemetery, new york, ohio, sculpture, symbolism on December 20, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Recently, I wrote about the Christian symbolism associated with the combination of the Greek letters alpha and omega. I’ve found even more photos that include this and wanted to share them with you.
The Holley family in Lake View Cemetery has them intertwined.
The Smiths of Forest Lawn Cemetery included the alpha and the omega symbols on their marker.
Posted in Dead Men Do Tell Tales, tagged buffalo, cenotaph, cenotaphs, new york, occupation, trinity church, wordless wednesday on November 21, 2012| 1 Comment »
Posted in Graveless memorials, tagged babies, buffalo, cenotaph, cenotaphs, child, children, new york, trinity church on November 18, 2012| 1 Comment »
Nearly everything in Trinity Church had a memorial plaque or inscription on it. Unsurprisingly, the baptismal font is dedicated to a little girl who died young. I wonder what it felt like for the parents of Mary Rochester to watch babies be baptized in the font with their daughter’s name on it.
Posted in In the church..., tagged buffalo, cenotaphs, grave art, stained glass, trinity church on November 15, 2012| 2 Comments »
Earlier this summer we took a trip to Buffalo, New York, and stopped by the Allentown Arts Festival. In conjunction with the festival, Trinity Church was opened up for the public to walk through, and I of course went in with my camera. The walls and windows were covered in memorials that I wanted to show.
I took a number of photos of stained glass windows with dedications, and luckily it was an overcast enough day that my photos were not all overexposed. Memorials like those in stained glass represent a kind of common cenotaph in our culture – we may be interred in a cemetery or churchyard (or even have our ashes scattered to the winds or the sea) but those we love put our names somewhere else that more people visit – on the bench at our favorite park, in stained glass at our church, in a memorial brick at our alma mater. People we knew who spent time in those places see our names and remember us, and those who never knew us read our names to themselves and wonder who we were and what we were like.
Usually the stained glass containing names is at the bottom in its own panel – sometimes I could get the whole window, but sometimes the light wasn’t quite right.
Posted in Dead Men Do Tell Tales, tagged buffalo, clergy, cross, euphemisms for death, forest lawn cemetery, grave art, ihs, new york, occupation, tombstone tales, wordless wednesday on July 25, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Morbid Musings, tagged buffalo, clergy, euphemisms for death, forest lawn cemetery, new york, occupation on July 24, 2012| Leave a Comment »
This is the first time I have seen “translated” used as a euphemism for death. It communicates a belief in death as simply a step rather than a final thing.
Posted in Cemetery Sculpture, Symbolism, tagged anchor, astrolabe, buffalo, forest lawn cemetery, grave art, new york, sculpture, symbolism, tombstone tales on July 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Walter Norton’s monument doesn’t state his occupation, but I’m going to guess that he was a sailor, possibly specifically a captain or navigator, since he has both an anchor and an astrolabe on his monument.
Posted in Dead Men Do Tell Tales, tagged buffalo, forest lawn cemetery, history, new york, occupation, tombstone tales, war of 1812, wordless wednesday on July 18, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Dead Men Do Tell Tales, tagged baby, buffalo, child, children, epitaphs, forest lawn cemetery, new york, tombstone tales on July 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Morbid Musings, tagged buffalo, epitaphs, forest lawn cemetery, grave art, new york, sculpture, tombstone tales, unsolved on July 9, 2012| 1 Comment »
Cemeteries are windows to the past, but sometimes they are somewhat clouded and cracked, so that the past we conjure up is cloudy or incomplete. I considered using this stone for a Wordless Wednesday post but then I realized I have questions that I wanted to ask about it. The monument stands to Barbara and Jacob Miller in Forest Lawn Cemetery and looks unremarkable for its time and place – the metal plaque with the deceased’s faces on it is a little more rare. But it was the epitaph that intrigued me.
Like father and mother they remembered us in life. We will not forget them in death.
Mr. and Mrs. Capt. J.B. Souter
Who were the Millers and the Souters? What relationship did they have? The epitaph strongly implies that the Souters erected the Millers’ monument, a task usually carried out by family. Did the Millers have family that couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of the arrangements? Or were the Souters and Millers related, just not immediate family to one another?
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A Grave Concern 