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1:04

Hello. I spent three years

1:06

of my disordered youth at a drama college

1:09

in the hope of becoming, well, a famous actor. One

1:11

of the standard items in the timetable

1:14

was verse speaking. And for one such

1:16

lesson, I was required to learn Andrew

1:18

Marvell's poem To His Coy

1:20

Mistress. Well, I began to recite it

1:22

in a slow, well, sententious

1:24

voice. Had we but whirled

1:27

enough in time, but was

1:29

rapidly pulled up by the tutor. Taylor,

1:32

he bellowed before I completed another line.

1:35

Do you realise what this poet is saying?

1:38

Get your kit off before we

1:40

both die. Yes, the graves

1:43

are fine and splendid place, but none,

1:45

I think, do there embrace. Well,

1:47

those lines came back to me as I read a beautifully

1:50

written new book which examines how the grave

1:52

imposes order, conveys social

1:55

values and provides catharsis

1:57

and connection. Those words come from the

1:59

poem.

1:59

from a book with the singular

2:02

title, Grave, and its author is New

2:04

York writer and researcher, Alison

2:06

Meyer. She now joins me. Alison,

2:08

let's start with a little personal biography.

2:11

You became a cemetery tour

2:13

guide by chance, and you seized

2:15

on this opportunity to tell stories

2:18

really that others had not noticed or

2:20

not talked about or not told. Tell

2:22

me a little about those stories, how they fed

2:24

into your interest in the history

2:27

and the meaning of the grave.

2:29

My background is in journalism, and as

2:31

you mentioned, I'm always really interested in

2:34

how these places can tell stories. And

2:36

I'm not originally from New York City, I am

2:39

from Oklahoma, and when I moved

2:41

here, I just happened to move a block

2:43

away from a Greenwood Cemetery, which was opened

2:46

in 1838. It's this incredible

2:48

Victorian cemetery with all these

2:51

soaring monuments, and it was so different

2:53

from the cemeteries I grew up with in Oklahoma,

2:56

which are, you know, like a lot of American

2:58

cemeteries, very flat golf course

3:00

precision cut grass, standard

3:03

granite monuments. And I became really

3:05

curious like how we got

3:08

to there from this Victorian moment

3:10

in time, and then the cemetery tours

3:12

I've always approached as just like another

3:15

way to tell stories like I would in my writing

3:17

about, you know, art or history or culture.

3:19

Tell me just a little bit more about this cemetery

3:22

in Greenwood. I mean, you say talk about it's soaring

3:25

Gothic entrance. What else was about it that

3:27

attracted your attention? It starts off great

3:30

soaring Gothic entrance that has actually a

3:32

colony of green monk parrots that

3:34

live in it, you know, not native

3:36

to New York, but they have found a home there, kind

3:39

of strange otherworldly entrance,

3:42

and then it just has these beautiful winding

3:45

paths that were really designed for you

3:47

to get lost on these meditative walks.

3:50

There's beautiful statuary because,

3:53

you know, this opens before the Metropolitan

3:56

Museum of Art in New York City. And

3:58

so it was one of the places people. people were not

4:00

just going to see art but also going

4:02

to present art.

4:04

It's very much a moment in time.

4:06

You know, in London, too, you

4:09

have, I think, what are called the Magnificent Seven

4:11

Cemeteries, like Kinsley

4:13

Green Highgate. And Greenwood

4:15

is very much around the same time, you know, when these

4:18

garden-like cemeteries are being opened. But

4:20

you wanted to move away from almost the grandeur

4:22

of this particular cemetery, and you wanted to

4:25

know about people not immortalized

4:27

with names on street companies or endowments

4:30

tell me a little bit about the people you went in

4:32

search of.

4:33

Permanence is a privilege, you know, to

4:35

have a monument that you think

4:37

will be there forever. Is not

4:39

something afforded to everybody. All

4:42

of the divisions of life tend

4:44

to carry over into death. What

4:46

happens to people who are unidentified,

4:49

who are unclaimed or unable to afford

4:51

a burial. And the place I

4:54

visited for the book is called

4:56

Heart Island, and it's New York City's Potter's

4:58

Field, which basically means a place where

5:01

people who are not able to afford a burial

5:04

elsewhere are interred or who are not

5:06

known are interred. And ours, New

5:08

York City's, is a very unique place

5:10

in that it's actually an island where

5:12

since about 1869 to 2019,

5:16

all of the burial was conducted by

5:18

inmates, most recently from

5:21

Rikers Island. So it was run by a Department of Correction.

5:24

And rather than having individual graves,

5:26

people there are interred in these very long

5:28

trenches with coffins stacked

5:30

up in them. And I happened to go there

5:33

on this very, you know, unintentionally

5:35

fortuitous date of like March 7th, 2020. You

5:39

know, of course, not knowing just a week

5:41

later that Heart Island would

5:43

suddenly become one of the most visceral

5:46

images of the pandemic's impact on

5:48

New York City. But I had just been

5:51

there and knew that those trenches were not new,

5:53

that that is how people had been

5:55

buried. It's just that people remembered Heart

5:57

Island existed again.

5:59

look at graves past, present and

6:02

future, how we got to where we are now

6:04

and how the ways we care for the dead have

6:06

changed. These uniform lawn-style

6:09

cemeteries with their orderly rows of

6:11

granite monuments you say are relatively

6:13

new. What do we know about the oldest

6:16

known modern human burial,

6:19

the origins if you like, of the contemporary grave?

6:22

My book is part of the Object Lessons

6:24

book series and it really does look at human

6:26

design. We

6:28

all die. That's always

6:29

been the case, but the grave is really something

6:32

we had to make and design.

6:35

The earliest known intentional human

6:38

burials go back about 78,000 years where people

6:41

were buried very purposely

6:44

and with care in caves, sometimes

6:46

with objects that they might

6:49

have used in life that they possibly might

6:51

need in death. That is, I think,

6:53

a really foundational moment

6:56

of what makes us human is how we

6:58

care for the dead and don't just treat

7:00

the dead as something to be disposed

7:03

of but to be respected

7:06

and honored in many ways.

7:08

It's not that different from the grave

7:11

now, even though of course now we have vaults and

7:13

caskets and bombings, but we

7:15

really are trying to give the corpse

7:17

a burial that still honors that it's a

7:19

human.

7:20

Tell me about the differences in belief

7:23

really, which inform the way

7:25

we treated death.

7:27

The grave is very cultural and as

7:29

you pointed out, dictated by belief.

7:32

One of the most significant beliefs is whether

7:34

the body should be intact when it's buried

7:37

and that's been a very Christian

7:39

belief that we need to be whole

7:41

in the grave or in order to rise up again

7:44

on Judgment Day. You compare that

7:46

to an India where cremation

7:49

has been very common or something

7:51

like Tibetan sky burial where

7:53

if you believe in reincarnation,

7:55

the specific body is not

7:58

as important. In Sky

8:00

Burial, that body is actually offered

8:02

up to the vultures or other

8:05

scavenging animals or just the elements. And

8:07

that's very different from what

8:09

we quote-unquote traditional American

8:12

Christian burial where you embalmed the body,

8:14

you know, put them in a casket very carefully

8:16

in the ground. If you talk about the way the

8:18

care of the dead has changed

8:21

in the 19th century, tell me

8:23

about that. I hinted at it earlier in

8:25

mentioning the magnificent

8:28

seven cemeteries in Greenwood because they

8:30

are all part of this moment

8:32

in the 19th century, the rural cemetery

8:35

movement. It's very much inspired

8:37

by what's happening in Europe,

8:39

particularly in Paris.

8:40

They

8:42

had a huge problem with

8:44

the dead because they had been entering people

8:47

in a place called Cemeter des Ennalsants,

8:49

like since the 12th century. So

8:51

you imagine until the 19th century that

8:53

is just becoming full of

8:56

graves and they end

8:58

up moving a lot of the dead into the

9:00

catacombs, which are now famous

9:03

as that Macabre Paris tourist

9:05

destination. But instead of just building

9:07

another graveyard that's in the center of the city,

9:10

Pere Lechez is established

9:12

on what is then more of the edge of the city.

9:14

And it's not just a burial

9:17

ground. It is significantly being called a cemetery,

9:19

which is kind of a new word at

9:21

this time. And it's much more like

9:24

a garden-like, park-like space and

9:26

places like London. And

9:28

then also in the US, Boston is the first

9:31

to establish one of these rural cemeteries. Actually

9:33

it's in Cambridge, which is also in Massachusetts

9:36

nearby. And it's established by the Massachusetts

9:38

Horned Cultural Society in 1831, so not a church.

9:42

It has a radical impact on how

9:44

these places are designed

9:46

and also how people are memorializing

9:49

people because you're no longer choosing to

9:52

be part of a congregation in your

9:54

burial. You're being buried as an individual.

9:57

And the rural cemetery movement really just...

10:00

This is a major turning point in American

10:02

graves, and you can see it in almost every

10:04

major city that would have had a

10:07

significant cemetery at the time that they probably

10:10

opened a new cemetery around the mid-19th

10:12

century going into the early 20th century.

10:15

And then I think there's also a bit of fatigue

10:17

with the heavy Victorian mourning

10:20

going into the era of the American

10:22

Civil War and the 1918 flu

10:25

pandemic, World War II, all these things

10:28

shift the grave further. You talk

10:30

about the way in which death now

10:32

is sort of distant. We

10:34

don't think so much about

10:36

the grave, perhaps, as we did. It's

10:38

interesting, actually, in my walk over

10:41

here to the studio where I'm at now,

10:43

I walked right by Trinity Churchyard,

10:45

which is one of New York City's surviving

10:48

old colonial churchyard. It's actually where

10:50

Alexander Hamilton is buried. And

10:52

it's right there by Wall Street. Most

10:55

of us just don't see cemeteries

10:57

on our commutes anymore, and that's

10:59

part of what the rural cemetery movement

11:01

did. The undertaking business also

11:03

emerges in the

11:04

19th century, and things like

11:07

embalming makes the funeral

11:09

something that is a professional practice,

11:11

and we don't really care for our own

11:14

dead anymore. I mean, there was the assumption

11:16

when the body was buried, it's supposed to be

11:18

there for perpetuity. To

11:21

what extent do the dead now have a

11:23

permanent resting place? I mean, globally?

11:26

Americans would be very surprised to know

11:28

that around the world, it's a lot more

11:30

common to have a renewable

11:32

lease for your grave. Going

11:35

back to Pere Lachaise, there are options

11:37

there to renew your grave.

11:39

I think it's 25, 50 years. I

11:41

mean, clearly, the dead person is not renewing

11:43

this with their family. And if you

11:46

don't, then the bones of the

11:48

dead are put into this communal ossuary,

11:50

which is a place where remains

11:52

are collectively stored. But

11:55

in the US, since this rural cemetery

11:57

movement comes about also at a time...

11:59

where the country feels like

12:02

it has limitless land, you know, ignoring

12:04

all the indigenous people that very clearly

12:06

live on that land. The grave

12:09

became something that is perceived as permanent

12:11

and that you will pay for perpetual

12:14

care for, thinking you're going to be there forever.

12:18

Places like New York City, I think, are coming

12:20

up against an interesting moment in time

12:23

where we have all these cemeteries

12:25

established in the 19th century that now are

12:27

running out of burial space. During

12:30

the 19th century rural cemetery movement, a lot of those old

12:33

colonial church yards got disinterred

12:35

and moved out of the city. I think that

12:37

there would be more resistance now if New

12:40

York City was like, oh, we're going to build a

12:42

highway through Calvary

12:43

Cemetery. Come get all your dead. I

12:46

think it would be a huge upheaval

12:48

of the way that people persevered. You quote Professor

12:51

of Law, who said, the idea that we should each

12:53

get an individual grave forever

12:56

is clearly an American invention.

12:59

That's Tanya Marsh, who literally

13:01

wrote the book on cemetery law.

13:03

It's interesting, she has a real estate

13:05

background and

13:06

the grave is real estate

13:09

and it has become this American

13:11

idea that you're not just buying

13:13

this plot that it's really something

13:16

you own, even though that's a misconception.

13:19

We're all familiar, aren't we,

13:21

with the notion that death

13:23

is said to be the great leveller. But

13:25

you've found that we are often as divided

13:28

in death as we are in life. To quote from

13:30

your study, the grave has been

13:32

as extravagant as a pyramid that stands

13:35

for millennia or as minimal

13:38

as an unmarked body in the earth allowed

13:40

to decompose into

13:43

obscurity. Tell me just

13:45

a little about how the grave

13:47

perpetuates the divisions

13:50

of life. It perpetuates

13:52

them, whether it's race, class,

13:56

and that I mentioned before, whether anyone's there

13:58

to care for you at the end.

13:59

whether you will end up being in an

14:02

unmarked communal grave. And

14:05

I do use this idea of like,

14:08

necrogeography in the book, thinking

14:10

about how to navigate a city by

14:13

looking at the way it has interred the

14:15

dead. And in my neighborhood, I think

14:17

this comes across in how different

14:20

cemeteries have been preserved and treated

14:22

because there is the Flatbush

14:25

Dutch Reform Church, which has its intact

14:28

graveyard. But then nearby is what

14:30

was the Flatbush African Burial Ground.

14:33

And this is where enslaved people as

14:35

well as African Americans

14:37

were interred, free

14:39

black people. And it has had no

14:41

preservation attention. It is just

14:43

an empty lot. And there is now a grassroots

14:46

effort to at least recognize

14:48

that it is a cemetery. With the

14:50

knowledge that segregation has so

14:53

shaped the United States, it's perhaps

14:55

not surprising that it's present in

14:57

cemeteries. I think it's often overlooked

15:00

how deep into the 21st century it has gone.

15:04

In 2017, in Logan County,

15:06

Oklahoma, that was the year that

15:08

they finally tore down this wire barrier

15:10

that divided the cemetery by race.

15:13

So that is very much shaped cemeteries.

15:15

And then also who gets to be permanent,

15:18

whose grave is kind of protected

15:20

from development. And very often if you've

15:22

been marginalized in life, you were marginalized

15:25

in death. And it remains a concern

15:27

that there is just simply not as much

15:30

preservation attention to

15:32

these sites as there are to white cemeteries.

15:36

While I think it is unrealistic that we preserve

15:39

every single grave, at

15:41

least recognizing if the dead are here

15:43

below our feet that we know

15:45

they're there. And then finally let me bring

15:47

you up to the modern day, the

15:50

way in which cremating has obviously

15:52

been gaining in popularity. As

15:54

you also talk about some more unconventional

15:57

ideas which have the potential to become

15:59

done.

15:59

part of our systems of death. Right,

16:02

and I think one of them has probably had more

16:04

prominence in the United States, which is

16:06

human composting. I think the term

16:09

might need a little bit of a branding,

16:11

I'm imagining. But it has been legalized here

16:13

in seven states, and it uses

16:15

a long-standing practice of livestock

16:18

composting to basically turn

16:20

the body into soil.

16:22

And the idea is that even

16:24

more

16:24

extreme than green burial,

16:27

that you are becoming a landscape and

16:29

you're kind of put to work as

16:31

material as part of nature. And

16:34

that's kind of the one gaining a lot of

16:36

momentum now. There's also hybrid

16:39

cemeteries, which are cemeteries

16:41

that date back to the 19th century, often

16:43

that are adding green burial sites. Because

16:46

when they opened, they probably were doing a lot of green

16:48

burial before embalming was really

16:50

part of our culture. But

16:52

then over time, it becomes

16:55

harder and harder to just be put into the

16:57

ground in a shroud or in a biodegradable

16:59

casket. And then there's

17:01

also alkaline

17:02

hydrolysis, which is water cremation,

17:05

got a big boost in public

17:07

prominence when Desmond Tutu chose

17:09

it for his disposition. One

17:12

fascinating development relates to what you

17:14

describe as staggering options

17:17

for transforming ashes into

17:19

memorial objects, vinyl

17:22

records pressed with ashes

17:24

that play the voice

17:26

of the departed. The vinyl record

17:29

one would unsettle me, but

17:31

I can see how such a thing might bring comfort. And

17:34

then I think you do might maybe have the option

17:36

to put a favorite song.

17:38

They range from something as

17:41

wild as putting cremains

17:43

into fireworks and shooting those off into

17:45

the sky to things that

17:47

are intended to be physical memorial

17:50

sites. There are these underwater

17:54

human-made reefs where ashes

17:57

or cremains are mixed

17:59

with

17:59

concrete, and actually they're trying to

18:02

support biodiversity by

18:04

replacing sites that might have lost

18:06

reef areas. And those are places

18:09

that range from just being these sort of ball-like

18:11

structures to actually having sculptures

18:14

of lions and things that are kind of wild. I think

18:16

the most popular one is people

18:19

like the idea of becoming a tree. Some

18:22

cemeteries are trying out that you could ferry

18:24

a biodegradable urn next to a tree

18:27

and have that be your tree rather than the

18:30

somewhat impossible idea that we could grow into

18:32

trees. I think we're not quite there yet. Alison

18:34

Mayer, thank you. Thank you very much.

18:37

Ashes to ashes, dust

18:39

to dust, if the women don't

18:41

get you the whiskey mug.

18:48

Oh, didn't you ramble, Jelly Roll

18:50

Morton? Jelly Roll Morton was a tune traditionally

18:53

played at a New Orleans jazz

18:56

funeral. In contrast to the sadder

18:58

spirituals played on the way to a burial,

19:00

it's an uplifting song suggesting

19:02

the deceased should have no regrets because

19:05

he rambled all around in

19:07

and out of town. But now with the help

19:09

of my next guest I can turn to an equally

19:11

moving but distinctly more literary

19:14

form of memorial. The memorial

19:16

bench, that restful public

19:18

seating that celebrates the bonds between

19:21

people and places. These benches

19:24

will be the subject of an inaugural

19:26

lecture to be given at London Metropolitan

19:28

University on Thursday the 19th

19:31

of October by my

19:33

next guest, the Professor of Life

19:35

Writing and Culture at London Metropolitan

19:38

University, Anne Carp.

19:40

She now joins me. And in

19:42

this lecture you're going to explore

19:44

the phenomenon of the memorial bench.

19:46

It may seem like a very pretty

19:49

obvious question but how are you defining a memorial

19:51

bench? What counts?

19:52

The definition that I use is

19:55

a bench usually made out of

19:57

wood in a public place. It might

19:59

be a place. park, it might be

20:01

in the countryside, it might be in an

20:04

urban square, which

20:07

is dedicated to someone or something.

20:10

So in the first place they are dedicated

20:13

to somebody who's died and there'll be either a

20:15

little plaque, a metal plaque, or

20:17

more commonly there'll be something

20:20

engraved in the wood with

20:22

the name of the deceased,

20:26

usually the dates they were alive, and

20:28

some description of them,

20:31

some salient fact either

20:33

about them and their life or their

20:35

relationship with that place. But

20:38

I then go on to explore ones that have

20:40

sort of taken the idea

20:41

and run with it. Let's come on

20:43

to those in a moment. Alison Mayer there was speaking

20:45

about the way in which death doesn't turn out really

20:48

to be a great leveller and how inequity persists

20:50

after death. So what do you send these

20:52

memorial benches only accessible

20:55

to people with what a great deal of money I should

20:57

imagine.

20:57

Well that is true although some of them have

20:59

been crowdfunded if there's

21:02

been a particularly notable local

21:04

figure or there's a whole

21:07

constituency the bench would speak

21:09

to. In Central Park in New

21:11

York for example they have an adopter

21:13

bench scheme and

21:15

it costs ten thousand dollars. For

21:18

one bench. For one bench, yes. For

21:20

one Hampstead Heath it's I think just

21:23

over two and a half thousand pounds. So

21:25

yes as Alison said death

21:27

is definitely

21:28

not the great leveller. Your lecture

21:30

draws together what I know to be some

21:32

of your long standing research interests including

21:35

the memorialisation of lives

21:37

and death and the role of public space

21:39

in our lives.

21:40

I wrote a book about ageing called How to Age

21:43

and I've written about disability for many

21:46

decades about disability not as

21:49

an adjective or a state but

21:51

as a verb. In other words how

21:54

we can be disabled by our

21:56

environment or conversely how

21:58

we can be enabled I mean, if you're in a wheelchair

22:01

and there are steps, you are definitely disabled.

22:04

If there's a ramp, you aren't. And

22:06

with aging, one of the things I was interested

22:09

in is how we project

22:12

frailty, fragility and dependence

22:15

onto old people as a

22:17

way of not having to own the fact that

22:19

throughout our life's arc, various

22:22

stages, we all are dependent

22:25

and we all experience periods of

22:27

fragility. But that's all projected

22:30

onto old people. And it seems to

22:32

me that the bench is a place where

22:34

everyone can rest. But

22:37

also at the same time, it's

22:39

part of the commons in the sense

22:41

of

22:41

public space, encourages

22:43

conviviality, people

22:45

to talk to strangers, if even

22:48

in a fleeting way. And the

22:50

memorialization thing is pretty

22:52

personal to me because I'm the daughter

22:54

of Holocaust survivors. So

22:56

only one of my grandparents has

22:59

a grave, my maternal grandmother. So

23:02

I guess I've been interested for a very long time

23:04

in how you mark not

23:07

just the death of someone, but their life,

23:09

really. The idea of having these benches,

23:11

these memorial benches, gets you away from

23:14

the purview of the church and

23:16

the churchyard, doesn't it? I mean, that is

23:18

perhaps one that you see that as an advantage.

23:20

Well,

23:20

that is one of the key features. And

23:22

that's probably why this

23:25

is very much an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon.

23:27

I mean, one estimate is that there are over 27,000 such

23:29

benches in the UK. They

23:33

also exist in the US. I

23:36

gave an earlier version

23:38

of this paper at a conference in Madrid

23:41

about four years ago. And people

23:43

were astonished Europeans because

23:45

they hadn't encountered it. And that

23:47

is because in Catholic countries,

23:49

for example, mourning is

23:52

mediated through the church. So

23:55

I see this as part of the secularization

23:57

of mourning. interesting

24:00

factor I think which makes an interesting

24:03

contrast to what Alison was talking about is

24:05

that these benches have been described

24:08

as part of the sanitization

24:11

of death. In other words the separation

24:14

of physical remains

24:16

of a body and the marking

24:19

of a person's life. So when

24:22

somebody dies and they're buried in a graveyard

24:24

or a cemetery, it's a place

24:26

for death and they are sequestered

24:29

from life. But what I find fascinating

24:32

and very congenial about

24:34

memorial benches is that they

24:37

are part of

24:39

life. They sort of bring the

24:42

person, the traces of the body back

24:45

into the milieu which was

24:47

congenial to them where they lived, you

24:49

know maybe the little walk they did every

24:51

day. In the past I think

24:54

you know to have any kind of public memorial.

24:57

You were the great and the good. You were a general

24:59

who'd led an

24:59

army. You were a politician.

25:02

And now

25:03

we're in a very different culture

25:05

where with blogs, with

25:07

life writing, with social media,

25:10

ordinary people are wanting to celebrate

25:12

either their own lives or other

25:14

people's lives. It's really quite different

25:16

from going to a grave as it were and

25:18

mourning over a grave.

25:19

It is. It's much more celebratory I

25:22

think. And I think that's what's encouraged

25:24

them to be quirky. I mean I

25:27

just did an interview with someone who

25:29

has got a bench in memorial

25:32

to her mother who was a Viennese

25:34

Jewish refugee who came

25:36

here at the age of 16 and a

25:38

laugh for her

25:41

daughter who died in her 20s. But

25:44

the bench that has plaques to both

25:46

of them is in a children's playground.

25:49

I mean what could be more connected with a

25:51

kind of swirl of life than a

25:53

children's playground? What

25:54

are other examples that you've come across

25:57

which struck you? Perhaps what

25:59

the bench is saying?

27:23

and

28:00

I think we've got this idea that we're

28:02

all living virtually, we all live online,

28:05

and it's very easy to forget that we

28:08

are embodied people, and we also

28:10

live in places. We

28:13

go out to our local shops, to our local

28:16

pub, to our local park, and these

28:19

circuits are meaningful

28:20

to us. Anne Carp,

28:22

thank you very much.

28:24

And also a big thank you to all those who

28:26

sent me such moving and occasionally very

28:29

funny emails about the life and times of

28:31

their pets. They all wrote to me at ThinkingAloud

28:34

at bbc.co.uk. My

28:37

last words, I think they have to

28:40

be an epitaph, I've really no idea

28:42

of its origin, but in a strangely

28:44

moving way it captures the attempt of

28:46

someone who, though sadly illiterate,

28:49

attempts to emulate the formal

28:52

language of mourning. Despised

28:55

and forgotten by some, ye may

28:57

be, but the spot that contains

28:59

you is sacred to we.

29:02

That was a Thinking Aloud podcast

29:04

from BBC Radio 4. You'll find a treasure

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