Memento Mori

Where else would you spend your Halloween (and day before Halloween) but a cemetery? A party? Riddiculous. Trick-or-Treating? I wish.

Owing to the aforementioned costume fail and an X-Files-generated fear of the supernatural, my Halloween was destined to exist only in the daytime hours. So where does one go for a scare during the day? A cemetery. Duh.

The Cimetière Montparnasse isn’t really close to my house, but it’s close enough for me to walk, and spending money on a couple of metro tickets for (possibly) nothing was not an option. Plus, I really like walking in Paris. Sure there’s the occasional minefield of dog-leavings to navigate, but there’s really no better way to orient yourself.

Saturday (the day before Halloween) I set off for Montparnasse. My plan was to do some sketching, but as you very well may know, what is planned is not always what happens. So I ended up just walking around the cemetery, and ended up learning  few really interesting things about the French that made them a little more endearing.

French cemeteries are nothing like the ones in America. With little room to spare, families are buried together in the same plot in stone tombs built above ground. They more closely resemble cities than the American fields with crooked tombstone teeth. On Saturday, I went to Montparnasse expecting a quiet cemetery with only tourists and a few scattred families. What I saw was different, and much more beautiful.

For Toussaint, the French Day of the Dead, there is a sort of spring cleaning that goes on at cemeteries. In Montparnasse, the families came to sweep the dead leaves from their loved one’s graves, to clean the dirt and moss from their engravings, and to place flowers at their feet. Some people left little stones as a sort of remembrance. Others left candles and photos. There was a general air of quiet contemplation that came over the cemetery that not even car horns could penetrate. Instead of sketching, I drifted around for a while, eventually alighting on a bench in the center of the place. It was nice, after walking for so long, to just sit and watch.

An old woman walking by began to talk to me. She told me of the president in front of whose grave I was sitting. “He fell on a boat at sea,” she said. She asked me if I was visiting someone in particular. I wasn’t, I said, and she smiled. “A little of this, a little of that, huh?” Then she walked away, leaving me with the memory of one of the strangest conversations I’ve ever had with a stranger.

Sidenote: The French say “fallen” instead of “dead.” Sounds much more honorable and comforting, no?

On Halloween, I went back. I wanted to see more of the cemetery than just the main sections (and take pictures).

Some of the older graves, like this one, almost seemed forgotten. It was really sad to see the names all covered with moss, lost with the passage of time.

Almost all of the wreaths here were dedicated to "Ma Tante" (My Aunt).

"Do not cry for that which is immortal."

I think this was both the saddest monument and my favorite.

The memorial just to the right (with the yellow and orange flowers) was dedicated to a group of master printers. JSYK

A monument dedicated mostly to the memory of a young boy who died at three years.

Dedicated to the memory of a fallen infant.

This is the steet that splits the two parts of Montparnasse Cemetery. I thought it was really beautiful with all the trees.