Dozens of geese waddled down the path at the southern edge of Bohemian National Cemetery. The sound of traffic on Foster Avenue and Pulaski Road was a distant hum. In a back area, cemetery workers ate their lunch and lounged on grass in warm sunlight.
It was a bright mid-spring Friday, and, except for two women watering newly planted flowers at a single grave, the cemetery was empty.
“They do not come here like they used to,” said Philip Roux, the cemetery’s superintendent.
Thirty years ago, when Roux started working at Bohemian National, hundreds of people would be out on a weekday in good weather to clear weeds, plant flowers, say a prayer and just spend time.
Not now.
“On a beautiful day like today, you might get 20 to 30 people,” Roux said. “The younger generation doesn’t come. They put Mom and Pop in the ground, and that’s it. They have lives of their own, and going to the cemetery isn’t part of it.”
There was bitterness in Roux’s voice. But the situation isn’t as bleak as he paints it.
Yes, cemeteries throughout Chicago and the suburbs have seen a drop in visitation from mid-century. But the drop isn’t uniform. Some cemeteries remain relatively busy. Some even report a resurgence of interest, due in part to newly arrived ethnic groups and in part to a heightened sense of mortality in the aging Baby Boomer population.
And there are still two days a year when all cemeteries are jam-packed — Mother’s Day and Monday, Memorial Day.
Sure, it can seem callous and thoughtless when younger people fail to frequent the graves of their relatives and friends as much as earlier generations did, but the phenomenon has more to do with the changing nature of American society than in the hardness of their hearts.
Even if those younger people aren’t going to cemeteries, they are still human. They can’t help but remember their dead, struggle to cope with their loss, and face, however grudgingly, however unwillingly, the fact of their own demise. They just do it in different ways.
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Joe and Angie Gallo are digging in the rich black soil around two gravestones in Elmwood Cemetery in west suburban River Grove. They’re planting a colorful combination of geraniums, dahlias and snapdragons.
One of the stones is for Joe’s parents. Joe’s father, Charles, who died in 1979, is already buried in the plot. His 89-year-old mother, Lena, is still going strong although she uses a walker to get around. The other stone is for the grave of Lena’s sister.
“We respected them when they were alive,” Angie says. “We respect them when they are dead. We feel it’s our duty.”
Elmwood is one of the busier Chicago-area cemeteries. Here and there, on this particular weekday morning, men and women, nearly all of them elderly, are tending to graves. By the end of the day, maybe a couple hundred visitors will have come through the gates.
More than a dozen ethnic and religious groups are represented in large numbers at Elmwood. This is unusual. Much more common is for a cemetery to be dominated by one or two nationalities. Holy Cross in Calumet City in the south suburbs, for example, has long been the burial place of choice for South Side Poles.
At Elmwood, Russians and Ukrainians are buried within the large grass circle in front of the mausoleum. The Swedes are across the road. Along the eastern edge of the cemetery is a section of Assyrians. Nearby are Greeks.
Roma — the southern European group formerly known by the negatively tinged term “gypsies” — are concentrated in a section near Elmwood’s entrance. Graves in this section tend to be somewhat elaborate, a Roma tradition.
One large stone features the photograph of a heavy, bald man with a thick moustache, wearing sunglasses, a blue blazer and a solid black collarless shirt. A gold chain with a heavy pendant is around his neck.
The stone is for Yowanie Yanis Demitro, who died in 1993 at the age of 50. His wife Rose will share this grave with him when her time comes. But the headstone is devoted almost exclusively to Yowanie, who was known as Butch. And much of the stone is taken up with a statement about Butch that, despite unusual spelling and phrasing, suggests the affection of those he left behind:
“The man who rests here was everything but a common man. Although there were many common men among him, he never let them influence him. For none were equal to his intelligence. He was master of his fate and captain of his soul. His strength — unbeatable. Courage — uncomparable. Wisdom — unbelievable. A legend in his time. Butch. Unforgettable. Forever in our eyes, reflections and smiles. We miss you.”
In some ways, the grave site of Larry Reed, in a section called Lullaby Land on the other side of the cemetery, is even more eloquent. Lullaby Land is one of two areas in Elmwood for stillborn infants and children who die during their first year.
Larry was only a month old when he died in 1966. But near his headstone on this May morning is a rectangle of plastic flowers with the word “Brother” in the center.
The decoration is evidence that, more than three decades after Larry’s young life came to an end, some sister or brother is still visiting his grave.
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“People think of the dead, but they don’t always go to the cemetery to visit,” says Dolores Vendl of the Catholic Cemeteries of the Archdiocese of Chicago. “I don’t think they do it with malice aforethought. They’re involved in more things. They’re involved in their children more. It’s a different society.”
Thirty years ago, who’d ever heard of a soccer mom? Or the daddy track? Thirty years ago, family members still tended to live near each other — and often in the same ethnic neighborhood or suburb.
But, today, those tight community and family ties have been significantly weakened. It’s nothing for your next door neighbor to be transferred to Phoenix, or for you to be reassigned to Seattle.
At Holy Cross Cemetery in Calumet City, there are still Polish people who are so intent on manicuring the land of their loved one’s grave sites that they bring their own lawn mowers.
Yet, even Holy Cross is feeling the impact of the increasing mobility of Americans.
“It used to be, years ago . . . people would buy a dozen graves — young people,” says Edward Malony, a service representative. The family was planning ahead, planning for everyone — for Mom and Dad and the children, and even uncles, aunts and cousins — to be buried together.
Today, a couple will just buy two plots, Malony says. They leave it to their children to make their own burial plans — wherever they may be living.
Such shifts in the nature of everyday life have an impact on people and on the way they think about the dead, says Peter Homans, a University of Chicago psychologist who has studied mourning extensively.
The old ways of mourning — including cemetery visits — aren’t working as well as they used to, Homans suggests, so Americans are looking for other methods of remembering the dead and of coming to grips with their own mortality.
And one of those methods is television.
Homans points to Ken Burns’ much-praised PBS series on the American Civil War as an example of a new way of mourning. Millions of Americans watched the series and were touched by the stories of pain, death and valor. Through television, they felt connected to these people of the past, and they recognized what was lost — in terms of human life, human hopes and potential — in the internecine conflict. And recognizing that past loss was a way for them to deal with loss in their own lives.
Another example of this was the news coverage on television and in print of Princess Diana’s death and funeral. Americans, glued to their TV sets, acted as if they had lost a close friend — and, in some odd way, they had.
Americans no longer feel as connected to their neighborhood as their parents did. To make up for this, they seem to find comfort in seeing themselves as members of a national community and an international community.
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At Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Stickney, Jack Smith is torn.
He’s worked at Mt. Auburn for more than a quarter of a century, and it angers him that so few people come to the cemetery to visit the graves. It seems to show such a lack of respect.
Yet, he also knows it’s a complex thing.
“I lost both my parents,” he says. “Both of them are buried back in New Jersey. I’ve gotten back to see my father once. My mother died a few years ago, and I haven’t gotten back to see her yet. It’s not what you’d like to do.”
It’s just the way life is today.
When the time comes, Smith and his wife will be buried in Mt. Auburn. Will his four children visit?
“You would hope they might drive by the cemetery and take a look at the gravestone.
“But I’m not banking on it.”
