Cemeteries, Death, and Holy Places

“And as to you Corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me”

-Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

Silent like the trees, like human roots in the soil, the dead are buried. In soundless cities, in cemeteries, humans ceremoniously drive their dead over the threshold and plant them in the garden of bodies. Then the living leave. And the dead stay. I feel in my bones that wherever human death returns to the earth is sacred.   

All death returns to the earth, ceremoniously or not, but cemeteries are where I know our dead exist, where I know the dead are buried. However, my Mormon theology has neglected this kind of death, the kind that is buried in the ground. The kind that stays in the earth. The kind I know. Mormon theology builds temples above ground for the dead and then tells me that death does not exist, that our spirits never die, and that our bodies will somehow regrow muscle and tissue and cells that have already become something else.

I’ve always had difficulty grasping and believing in the LDS theology that says death doesn’t exist. If death doesn’t exist, theology erases my experiences with death and the laws of this world. This has caused me to perform mental acrobatics and I have spent most of my life terrified of my doubt, terrified of death, terrified that my loves wouldn’t live forever, but now I am learning to be here, on this planet where death does exist.

Isaiah rejoices, “the earth will give birth to the dead” (26:19). I love this feminine imagery of the earth as our mother, her womb as the soil that holds the dead bodies of her children. This scripture keeps death here, here where our bodies return to our mother who made us, here where the dead are dead and beauty grows from the earth. But we often skip this part and cling blindly to the phrase: “your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise.” Again, theology fails me as it walks past the death that I know, the death of our bodies, and reaches for another ethereal place. A place our dead do not exist.

Mormon theology has split death into two binaries: spirit and body, divine and earthly. But I feel this ripping me, tearing me apart. So, I improvise. Ecclesiastes 12:7 says, “And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” This could be viewed as a separation, the body to the earth and the divine spirit to heaven, but for me, God and earth are one. God is here, in me and you and every person who dies; she is the earth. For me, the dust of our bodies and our spirits all return to the God who gave us ourselves, the whole returns to the earth, to God who gave it.

I hope that Mormon theology is right, that our spirits have a magical realm of existence that never ends, but I also hope that God doesn’t just conquer death, I hope she cradles it and witnesses it and never forgets it. I hope she cares about our bodies as much as our souls and that she gives us time to die. Time to be grotesque and time to rest. I hope this is why God exists: to hold death, spirit and body, and then to birth something new. And if she is anything like me, she will want to stay with the bodies she loves as they return to the earth.

Perhaps the human bodies planted in the soil grow silent, sacred secrets with their souls like invisible wildflowers on Her skin. Perhaps these invisible flowers are what I feel as I walk between headstones and read names and epitaphs; perhaps I feel all the invisible things she holds and births from death. Perhaps our spirits linger here like the people on the little island of Sulawesi believe – where soul and body are bound together more tightly, where dead bodies sit in chairs or lay in beds with their living, breathing family all around them for weeks or months, waiting. I like this idea. What if our bodies and souls tarry together when we die?

Cemeteries, like everything, bare the wounds of patriarchy, of wealth, of corruption; I can find no holy place that does not bleed all over me. However, and also, I find the divine in the silence of death, in our rituals of burial and cemeteries and headstones, in this place where my worthiness is never questioned at the gates, where dead bodies cannot build their own spaces so the living create spaces for them. Somehow, these spaces designed for the dead alleviate my dread of death. Temples, where souls are separated and saved, feed my obsession and fear of death, but cemeteries, where bodies are laid to rest in the earth and where I can imagine soul and body together, are a refuge for me; cemeteries offer me peace and silence in all that I can and cannot see. There are no answers here, only bodies.

When the dead cross the threshold of a cemetery, they join the silence and mystery of death, and when the living cross the threshold into the garden of death, they step into the invisible mists of memories and whispers of not another world, but this one. A world that gives me hope that God exists here to hold all the things, living and dead. Humans practice many religions and rituals, most conquer, but the truest truth I have found is that humans die. Every single one. So, I step onto the holy ground of cemeteries where I know our dead exist.