Talking With the Dead: Part 1
There was a thick fog over the lagoon on 12 November: melancholic and spooky enough to go talk with the dead and maybe get some classic shots of abandoned graveyards in the mist. As it happened, they were far from abandoned: vast fields of commemorative plastic flowers had been recently replaced on most plots twelve days previous for Tutti Santi and things were spruced and tidy.
To talk to the dead you have to be quick these days. Space is now at a premium on San Michele and Venetians buried on the island are usually are left in peace for around 10 – 12 years, before the body is exhumed and the bones placed in metal boxes and lodged in the ossuary for a fee. A few privileged families can lease tomb space longer, but if you can’t afford either of these 2 options (or there aren’t any relatives alive) the bones are placed in a communal bone-yard.
Family members are asked to be present at exhumations to check that the skeleton has calcified: the artist Emmanuela Ficotta told me that she wanted the skull of her father to keep, but the body hadn’t rotted enough and was re-interred. My father-in-law was the only one of three brothers courageous enough to attend his father’s exhumation. He thought his father wouldn’t like the idea of mixing his bones with others in a mass grave, and so he paid for a box. He also said that he was able to divorce the sentimental attachment he had for his father from the skeleton he saw.
17/11/2015 @ 09:13
This lovely entry made me think of a very different graveyard experience, almost antithetical in fact: have you read Carlo Levi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli? The description of his visits to the small graveyard in Gagliano, where the author lived for one year in forced residency under Fascism, always stayed with me.
It was easy to find it on line: “I climbed slowly toward the cemetery. But the olive trees gave no shade; the sun pierced their delicate foliage as if it were lacework. I decided to go through the broken-down gate into the enclosure of the cemetery proper; here was the only cool and private spot in the village, and perhaps the least melancholy as well. As I sat on the ground, the dazzling reflection of light from the clay disappeared behind the wall; the two cypresses swayed in the breeze and clusters of roses bloomed among the graves, a strange sight in this flowerless land. In the middle of the cemetery there was a ditch, a yard or two deep, neatly cut out of the dry earth in readiness for the next dead body. A ladder made it easy to get in and out of this open grave, and I had made it my custom on these hot days when I came up here to lower myself into it and lie down. The earth was smooth and dry, and the sun had not burned it. I could see nothing but a rectangle of clear sky, crossed occasionally by a wandering white cloud; not a single sound reached my ears. In this freedom and solitude I spent many hours”…
Well, now there’s a suggestion for the next scorching hot venetian summer days..
17/11/2015 @ 10:39
Hi Barbara,
It could be the next big thing on Airbnb no? Rent-a-tomb and relax on your sumer vacation…
17/11/2015 @ 14:59
They could have their ashes or ground bones turned into diamonds, like artist duo ATOI did recently (but with Bideford Black!) – http://www.heart-in-diamond.co.uk/