I was having a weird day today. Ended up accidentally crashing a funeral! Hoooow? How did this happen? Well…
Last week I was reading in one of my cemetery books that there was a beautiful cemetery in Jaffrey NH. Really?? I mean I live very nearby and had never heard of this cemetery. The book also denoted the driveway to it was easy to miss and basically said it was in the middle of nowhere. It was called the Philips-Heil Cemetery which is not an unusual name as many of these older cemeteries are named after the original families that buried their loved ones in them. Seeing as it was in the middle of nowhere, likely a family cemetery, and very old (I’m talking slate stones here) I did not expect to find anyone out there.
It was indeed a bit of trouble to find but the sign out front was big enough to see coming from one direction. It was up a long narrow dirt driveway in the woods, so you could not see the cemetery from the road. As I drove up I found a parking lot. And it was FULL. I mean really full… there had to be thirty cars here. Whaaaat was going on?
I found a tiny slot where I could squeeze my Prius. A dirt road continued onward but I wasn’t about to get my wimpy ass Prius stuck and unable to turn around with so many witnesses. Later I’d learn it was only a short drive to overflow parking where there were spaces. Wish I’d known that.
Do I get out or turn around? People were already looking at my car. Hrumph. I got out. If I had to I could bluff in this odd Harold and Maude kinda moment. Upon getting out I realized this cemetery was TINY and there was no real way I could just wander by the services and pretend to be there for someone else, but I had no other option. I walked up to road by them getting dagger eyes from whoever was leading the ceremony. It was just wrapping up. I was not dressed for this sort of thing and was clearly an outsider.
By now I was uncomfortable and so were a great deal of others. I tried not to make eye contact as I walked to the opposite side of the cemetery and peered at the stones intently. Sadly, all these stones were super old and I couldn’t pretend I was here to leave flowers for a great uncle or something. By now I could smell the faint aroma of decay. That was odd. I’ve been to funerals before, I never remember smelling the dead. Then it dawned on me, I thought Heil might be a Jewish surname. Great. Did I just crash a Jewish funeral in the midst of that clusterfuck between Israel and Palestine? When tensions are at an all-time high?! YEAH, that might explain why the person leading this (the rabbi? The funeral director? Not sure) was watching me with such intensity it was burning a hole in my neck. I swear I was not here for any nefarious reasons. I couldn’t give a shit what anyone’s religion or ethnicity is – I just like the pretty stones!
As people were leaving a friendly man and his wife approached me smiling. Oh fuck, here it comes.
“Just out taking pictures today?”
“Yes, I like to take photos of historic grave markers.”
“Oh! Well! The newer stones are up front. You can see many generations of the Philips family here.”
“Thank you!” I smiled and wandered off.
Later I heard a girl and her mum speaking.
“Why is she here?” She asked, obviously referring to me.
“She might know someone buried here. Or she’s out taking photos of the old stones. People do that!”
“WHHHHHHY?!”
“Because they’re gorgeous!”
Touché, ma’am. Touché.
This cemetery was very small. Around 150 or so stones. Most were very old and in this setting, they were quite charming nestled away in a quiet corner of the woods. It was VERY New Englandy! Most were pretty uniform although there was one monument that stuck out at the back near the overflow parking. It wasn’t a headstone. It was a chair. Made of marble.
Later on in the day I looked up this cemetery’s history and found this note about the chair, “A striking memorial is that in the north end of the yard, looking across to Gap Mountain. It is a great stone chair, fit to be the throne of a monarch of the hills. It is a memorial of the Ross family, three generations of whom lived hereabout. It is said that according to the belief of a descendant, spirits often return to the scenes of their earthly existence, and so, with filial respect, he placed for them this chair, facing the sunset, where in seemly fashion they may sit at ease when they return to muse upon the scene of their earthly existence.” (You can find the rest of the article here.)
Basically, this cemetery was the remnants of a farming enclave that lived in between Jaffrey and Fitzwilliam, too far away from either to be fully incorporated. Very interesting! And without further ado here is the very scant few snaps I took.
Once I got to the feed store I decided to take an equally ridiculous route home. That’s how I ended up in Sharon, a town I had no real reason to be in. As I drove down some beautiful rural streets I noticed a cemetery smack dab in the middle of nowhere. (My GPS claimed it was 80 McCoy Road. I just discovered the “Where am I?” button and am bouncing with delight at that one!) And when I say smack dab in the middle of nowhere I mean it. It was a small cemetery surrounded on all sides with forest, contained within the boundaries of a stone wall. From afar it didn’t look that interesting – very typical marble stones from the 1800’s. White marble ages poorly and that’s why I tend not to have any interest in them but it is still October and I did promise more spooky places so off I went.
There was a little white gate facing the road. It wasn’t open but there were no locks on it either. There was also no markers telling me which cemetery this was but Google figured that one out for me. I opened the little gate and walked in. There wasn’t much to see at first, this was a small cemetery of maybe 100-150 stones, none drew me to them but the feeling of this place was surreal. It was like I was walking into a bubble where time was lost. The stones here had once been repaired, a few split in half were fused back together with supports and propped back up, but even this effort seemed to have been a long time ago. Moss grew over the supports. This place felt utterly forgotten. That’s when I noticed something weird. Off to the side of the cemetery, past a little stone wall, there were new plots and they were really new. It was if most of the cemetery was the 1850’s or so and then 2017. Hmmm. I headed over to check them out.
These new stones were scattered like confetti on the grounds. They faced all directions and made no sense what-so-ever. Stranger still were the stones themselves. While most were rather ordinary there were a lot that were… odd. The most normal of which was a very modern stone with a modern etching of a lighthouse, a beach, and an old Studebaker driving down the road in front of it. It read, “On the road again.” That just made me shiver a bit. Why had I approached this one stone in particular while trying to take photos for a travel blog? A message from beyond… perhaps. Or just a coincidence. The next stone however was even more startling.
It was on the very edge of the cemetery and didn’t even look like a gravestone, it looked more like building debris. It was raw cut granite, very raw, with the tool marks used to quarry it still visible. It also had an engraving… of a mouse or a rat. I’ve seen a lot of gravestones and many of them have remembrances of cats and dogs on them, sometimes horses or birds, but this is the first mouse/rat and it belonged to an old couple. I might expect to see this on a young Goth’s stone, you know someone who died in the 90’s at age 25, but an elderly couple?! This seemed to be another possible message from beyond… as I used to breed fancy rats and mice many years ago. They brought me such joy I had often joked about getting one as a tattoo or memorializing them on a cemetery stone. I smiled. I liked these people, whoever they were.
Back in the old part of the cemetery I noticed a bizarre corner that seemed more confetti-like than the rest. I noticed those stones were also new and even had a bench overlooking them. They seemed even more raw than the rat/mouse stone. In fact one of them appeared to just be a rock that was already in the area, engraved thusly. Here there were a whole row of educators, scientists, mathematicians, and a few house wives scattered between them, though one was very sweet in stating, “Wife, mother, and a great woman.” She wasn’t going to be left out with the three descriptions! This also made me smile. I bet you these were some damn interesting people. At the very back another natural rock was affixed with a plaque remembering “the angel woman.” I wondered what this meant…
ust as I was leaving I noticed two stones which had been scrubbed clean. They were from the 1800’s and had been so thoroughly cleaned up they looked brand new. I wondered why these two stones? Before I reached the car I also found a tiny orange grub-like caterpillar. I tried taking a photo but he seemed incensed I was trying to handle him , rolled into a hedgehog ball, and clenched all his tiny feet together. There was no unrolling him.
