Originally published at: Man finds his life passion in cleaning and restoring gravestones | Boing Boing
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My visits to the cemetery always include cleaning my father’s gravestone (not to the extent this kind gentleman does, though). It’s a very therapeutic and peaceful activity that I recommend to anyone visiting the grave of a loved one.
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We do the same thing, a good long knife to trim the over growth and some bottled water to rinse it off. It’s nice to show up and see another family member must have visited and cleaned them off.
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That’s awesome.
I believe this summer the tribe is going to spend some time and money to restore the grave site of Chief Abram Burnett, which isn’t in as bad of shape as this one, but preventive maintenance will keep it so.
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There is an island in Clayoquot Sound called ‘Morpheus Island’ that has a century old cemetery on it. My future wife and I explored it on one of our first dates in the mid-90s.
There were a couple hundred overgrown gravestones deep in the forest. Mixed in were five or six perfectly maintained graves of Japanese Canadians who had died in the first couple decades of the 20th, prior to the WWII internment etc. Few if any had returned after the war, but the graves were very well maintained. It was a really striking thing to see amidst all the overgrown, neglected grave sites - some of whose descendents were alive and well 1 mile away in town.
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We volunteered to help clean up the Marble Cemetery on 2nd street in Manhattan one summer years and years ago. It was all overgrown and stones were covered and dirty. It was a small, mellow group led by a Lower East Side Eccentric with endless life stories. That was one of my favorite summers. The work was rewarding and relaxing* and the location perfect. They also have a delightfully web 1.0 site…
Except for our dogs when they opened up one of the crypts…they did not get good vibes from whatever spirits lingered there…
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I hope his restoration work follows best practices, as it would be sad if this were another (more subtle) “monkey Jesus” situation. People sometimes have good intentions but don’t know the (non-obvious) complexities, so they end up doing long-term damage to the things they’re trying to preserve, because in the short term it seems like an obvious improvement.
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I’m not an expert - but the guy seems to know what he’s doing.
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Certainly he’s not half-assing the work, and they seem to be in better shape than he found them. I suppose, worst case scenario, the headstones are in bad enough shape (and unlikely to get any conservation work done, at any point, by anyone else), that they would have continued falling apart anyways, and even temporary improvements are the best that would happen.
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He also has a YouTube channel if you don’t do Instagram.
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