There’s a Place for Us

For a city that is so alive, pulsing 24/7, New York City seemed full of death this weekend.  It was probably just me.  I flew east, dressed all in black and went to the funeral of my beloved New York aunt.  At night I could hear sirens screaming, quite a change from my quiet home in the Big Sur redwoods.

But my biggest encounter with death in New York was an afternoon at the huge Greenwood Cemetery.  Over half a million people are buried in this Brooklyn 19^th century landmark, 500 landscaped acres in the middle of a gritty industrial and residential part of town.  Here lie famous New Yorkers (Leonard Bernstein, Boss Tweed, Henry Ward Beecher, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mobster Joey Gallo, Louis Comfort Tiffany) and many anonymous as well (4600 Civil War dead.)  Ornate Victorian sculptured mausoleums stand next to mass graves of soldiers and fire victims. 

In most towns I visit I go to the cemetery. I love the history, the folk art, and the nature; I am inspired and moved.  I spent so much time in my local cemetery in Monterey, California that I started leading tours there, telling stories about its famous and infamous residents (Doc Ricketts, Richard Farina, Quock Moi.).

Americans in death, as in life, practice segregation; in the Monterey Cemetery (Cemeterio El Encinal, Cemetery of Many Oaks) there is the Catholic section, a Chinese and Japanese section way over at the far edge, even a Russian section.

As a minister I’ve led my share of memorial services (over 200, I would guess).  This past week I sat in the pew at the somber and respectable Upper East Side Anglican service for my aunt.  We heard the King James version of I Corinthians (“I spake as a child…”) and the rector intoned the rite of commendation (“Into thy hands O Lord we commend thy servant Nancy, a daughter of thine own redeeming.”)  We even sang the hymn “Jerusalem” although I didn’t quite get what the dark satanic mills had to do with her life.

But I tried not to analyze too much and just to worship and give thanks and ponder the mysteries of life and death.  Hearing my cousins and their children speak of Nancy Angell Streeter, I couldn’t help but imagine my kids at my funeral.  Serious thoughts.

Entrance to Greenwood CemeteryThe next day I visited Greenwood Cemetery with my 30 year old son, who lives very near it in Brooklyn. Through the ornate Victorian entrance we walked up the hill to the highest point in Brooklyn, where you can look west to Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty. On that hilltop a bronze, helmeted statue of Minerva, goddess of both war and peace, looks west toward her sister goddess, Lady Liberty. Erected by Victorians to mark the site of the 1776 Battle of Brooklyn, the first battle of the Revolutionary War, Minerva raises her arm in seeming salute and question to her sister: will these soldiers and immigrants ever live in freedom, ever live without war?

Surrounded by these hundreds of thousands of graves in this bucolic setting it’s hard to picture the raging Battle of Brooklyn on this hill, William Howe commanding the British, George Washington the Continental Army, both sides totaling 40,000 men including the British Navy in the Harbor.  It was a resounding defeat for the Americans and the British surrounded them there in Brooklyn.  But under cover of a foggy night Washington and his 9000 men were able to escape in the night in boats across the East River. 

Goddess Minerva waves to Statue of LibertyA few years ago newspaper headlines read “Goddess Minerva faces hardest battle yet.”  A developer wanted to erect a building that would have blocked those two female embodiments of our better selves, liberty and peace, from being able to see each other. Public outcry forced the plans to be scrapped.  Maybe we do want to remember the cost of war, the sorrow of death…..or have these two goddesses do it for us.

Just around the corner from Minerva is the simple grave of the great composer Leonard Bernstein.  Unlike the showy mobsters and Protestant millionaires, the Jewish conductor has a modest bench with his name; people often leave small stones on it in the Jewish ritual of remembrance.

I had actually been to this cemetery once before, but it was at night, on a full moon tour they offer.  Engaging guides in period dress with two accompanying accordian players led us all over the windy hills and paths, playing appropriate music at each stop: “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” by the mass Civil War graves, and “Nearer My God to Thee” for the Titanic victims.

Some friends and I, in a convivial mood, asked if they played requests?  Since we were ending our tour at Leonard Bernstein’s grave, might they play a song of his, like maybe from West Side Story?  Maybe “Maria” or “When you’re a Jet….(till your last dying day.”)  We thought we were pretty funny.  The accordianists consulted their music sheets in the dim light, paused, and slowly started playing the love song of the tragic lovers about to die, “There’s a place for us, a shining place for us.  Hold my hand and we’re half way there, hold my hand and I’ll take you there…somewhere, someday.”

Copyright © 2012 Deborah Streeter