A City of the Dead

I spent a good part of Memorial Day at the Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, as these picture will attest. Huge by any standard, the Green-Wood Cemetery comprises 478 acres, compared to Central Park's 843 acres. According to a map published by Green-Wood, there are typically, 7-9 funerals performed at the cemetery each day. Among the famous buried here were Currier & Ives, the Brooks Brothers, Boss Tweed, Charles Tiffany and Leonard Bernstein. But as in life, the names of most of Green-Wood's permanent residents go unremembered.

As one walks through this necropolis, one cannot help but to philosophize a bit, to think of the tens of thousands buried here, the tens of millions buried somewhere on the face of this earth, all of those who have gone before us. The silence, the wind, the monuments to lives long forgotten, the parents who outlived their children, the soldiers who died in war. These are our brothers and sisters, our family and friends. Be good to each other, bear witness, listen, appreciate and most of all remember.