The early-September sun was still baking the earth uncomfortably hot. It was not, however, so hot that walking through the cool, damp grass and along the shady roads of Colorado Springs’ Evergreen Cemetery was uncomfortable, as it would have been only a couple weeks earlier. My visit was a quiet one, save for a couple awkward instances: answering the guard’s questions as to what I was looking for, a groundskeeper arriving suddenly in a cart to warn about the sprinklers soon to turn on. For such a large cemetery—and particularly for one that I know is still burying the recently deceased—it was virtually devoid of living guests.  Now and again, there were signs of visitors past in the form of decorations left on graves still warranting visitation, but more often, there was little indication of the living’s interest in these dead.

Some years earlier- or later-

The day wasn’t nearly as bleak as one might hope for the ash-scattering of a loved one in the first few days of November. All in one car, six of us wound our way along the wending roads of Mount Olivet’s Roman Catholic cemetery in search of a plot filled in the 1950s. Rounding a corner that led up an incline, a terrier scampered past the car, returning to its owner, a Latina woman reclining on a large blanket—the only other living person in sight—which caused one of my companions to ask, voice full of disdain and acid,  “Who brings their dog to a cemetery?!”. Some months later, this same said person has begun to exercise in a popular location for such an activity: a cemetery near their home.

These are my own memories and observations of cemeteries, but they’re not outside the norm. For some reason, we don’t consider casual visits to the cemetery to be natural, even to visit our own deceased.  Tourist cemeteries, such as Arlington National Monument, and tourist-like uses of cemeteries are another topic entirely, can make the quiet of a graveyard less lonesome, but in the local—potentially small—cemeteries in or just outside cities across the United States, a more solitary experience is often experienced. Maybe it stems from the desire for a feeling of privacy, a safe place to grieve where no one will see you.  It could even be because when faced with reminders of death, while grieving or otherwise, we want to feel the haunting echo of absence, a sense destroyed by the presence of others and their noise.

Still, it’s something that I ponder frequently: why don't we visit our dead? Outside of certain secular holidays or in the absence of culturally and religiously set times, how often do Americans visit their dead?  Finding information that answers that question is frustratingly difficult.  Overall, I have the sense that the average American’s visitation of graves is quite low.  Far more frequent, I think, are the tourists out for a visit with a history or ghost tour if the site is old enough.  Additionally, some tourists are there just because it’s the Halloween season and a stroll through these neighborhoods of the dead seems thematically appropriate.

Of course, some of the difficulty in knowing how often and for what reasons cemeteries are visited is because Americans have such a split relationship with death. There is a fascination, but also denial or shame with dying and burial. We love true crime shows and depictions of death, but scorn those with taphophilia—a fondness for and/or interest in cemeteries and graves—leading to an awkward silence around the subject.  Apparently, it is acceptable to engage with death at a distance, but not to recognize and engage with it close up.

Do you visit family graves or cemeteries in general?  For what reasons do you choose to go or not go? Please help me know more about the American relationship with cemeteries and visitation by taking a short survey, here.