Do I even remember the first cemetery I visited? Probably not. Consciously, I remember it being the Veterans Cemetery in Honolulu, Hawaii – where my Papou (grandfather) was buried in 1997 and where my Puna (grandmother) joined him in 2019. I’ve been to that cemetery many times. My dad will probably tell you that the first cemetery I visited was the one in Tombstone while strapped on his back. I was probably less than a year old so I feel like that shouldn’t count. I think that was the trip I threw up on his head. Or maybe I did that a lot. Sorry dad.
What I can tell you is that I know exactly when my love of cemeteries exploded into a thousand tiny tombstone shaped pieces and I decided that I was going to be a weird cemetery loving kid for the rest of my life.
When I was a kid, my mom worked for a tech company that had her jet setting around the United States (and sometimes London!). I couldn’t, for the life of me, tell you what she did other than teach people how to use her companies software. Nowadays, she would probably run Zoom training sessions right out of our house. Back in the 90s, you had to physically go to these companies to train them. It was a wild time. The cool thing was that her company allowed her to bring people with her. I guess they considered it a perk since they were making people with families sit alone in hotel rooms for days on end. My aunt joined her on some trips. So did my dad and sister. Every once in a while, I got to join her. Other than the trip I am going to tell you about, San Diego was the other one I really remember. I still have the polar bear stuffed animal (named Five) from The San Diego Zoo. I was too young to meet her where she was so I always had a chaperone. The east coast trip, when I was in 7th grade, has become such a core memory for me. It established who I would become.
I was already into weird shit by the time I hit 7th grade. My favorite shows were Buffy the Vampire Slayer (still is!) and The X-Files. I watched horror movies with my dad and read books about vampires. Halloween was my favorite holiday and I was already begging to paint my bedroom black (something I would finally do as an adult living at her house because she was out of town and dad said yes). Don’t get me wrong, I still loved basic shit. The Spice Girls were my LIFE and I would kill anyone who said that NSYNC was better than The Backstreet Boys (that’s just a flat out lie). Life is about balancing weird with basic. This is best represented in my favorite colors (black and pink), as well as my top two musical artists (Taylor Swift and Alkaline Trio). Or even my top two favorite movies (Labyrinth and Scream). You get the picture.
In the late Summer/early Fall of 2000, I flew to Rhode Island with Puna to meet up with my mom. She had just finished her week long work trip and was going to take time off for me to meet my Greek family. Unlike most Greek families, we were a small bunch. My great grandparents came to the United States from Greece around 1910(ish) and settled in Massachusetts. Salem, Massachusetts, to be exact. It’s like my ancestors knew they were going to have a super weird but cool kid come into their family tree at some point. After visiting my Uncle Ems in Rhode Island, we made our way up to Salem to stay with my Uncle Charles (who was one of the coolest old dudes I ever met). He lived in the family house – the one that the boys built for my great grandmother and it was soaked in so much history. I felt like the walls could actually talk. It could tell me stories of people I never got to meet but who I’ve always felt with me. It would give me snap shots of Papou, before he became Papou, when he was simply George. So many things I wish the walls could have told me during my many visits there.
Anyway, you probably know where this is going, right?
Right.
How many cemeteries are in Salem? 10. And I’ve probably been to all of them. This first trip didn’t include the modern cemetery, where my family is buried (that wouldn’t come until 2005). It did include all of the incredibly old cemeteries from back when the witch trials occurred. I was caught. Hook, line, and sinker. That tourist group should really pat themselves on the back for how easily they reeled me in. I’ve been to Salem 5 times and I still do all of it. Every time. But there was just something about wandering around those cemeteries that made me feel at peace. The older cemeteries do that to me. The newer ones still feel… haunted. Like the souls buried there are still stuck here, trying to get out and rest easy. But the older ones are like open books, waiting to be read. They have stories, just like the walls of the Salem house.
On this trip, I learned that my mother has always found the same peace in cemeteries. Maybe that’s where I get it from. We would later visit Pere Lachaise in Paris and various other cemeteries around California, Hawaii, and Idaho.
Since that trip, I’ve made it a habit to go to cemeteries everywhere I go as well as look for cemeteries close to home. In fact, when Jacob and I first moved into our house, we had a cemetery breakfast date. I remember being so nervous to tell him I wanted to visit a cemetery during one of our first trips together (Seattle). I prefaced the whole thing by admitting that Jimi Hendrix was buried there and people visit there every single day so it’s not really that weird if like, everyone else is doing it right? Turns out, I dind’t even need to convince him. The best part is that this man has taken some of the best photos of me in cemeteries around the world. That’s some Goth Instagram Husband shit right there. I’m lucky he’s just as big of a weirdo as I am.
Don’t worry, I’ll take you on my film photography travels across the many cemeteries I’ve been to. So be sure to strap in, don’t play with Ouija boards, never whistle while in a cemetery, and get ready for some cool shit.
I can’t wait to share my cemetery photos and stories with you all. Have you ever visited a cemetery for fun? If so, where was it?
Writes with Wolves 