Toronto Cemeteries:

I am lucky to live within walking distance of 3 beautiful old cemeteries: St James Cemetery, The Toronto Necropolis and Mount Pleasant Cemetery. I spend a fair amount of time in these places. Here, gigantic old trees grow to their full natural forms, never chopped and deformed to make way for electrical wires. There is no constant hum and noise of traffic. The are only ever a few people and they usually seem quiet and contemplative. Even their dogs don’t bark. I took these photos over a few autumn days walking through St James and Mount Pleasant cemeteries.

Death (and Beyond?)

As a child, I remember finding dead birds in the grass under big windows and examining their intact but unmoving bodies. I thought: “It looks like a sleeping bird but, something is missing…it’s not asleep and somehow, it’s not really a bird at all anymore.” It wasn’t something I could see…but something I could sense. A cold absence. Going to an open casket funeral some years later, I had the same feeling while peering over the heavily made-up face of the old woman in the box: this is not really a person anymore.

Growing up, I never lost my curiosity about death and I paid attention to cultural and religious differences around the subject. I had so many questions. Where do we go, if anywhere? Do we return in a new form? Do we really face almighty judgement for our behaviour during our short time here? If death separates us, will we meet again? Do we just say these things to comfort ourselves when we lose someone or, do we really believe them? Maybe living is just like a light switch: Now it’s on…you are alive. Now it’s off…darkness…forever. I guess only the dead have all the answers and, at least in my life, they remain silent.

What I know for certain is that the dead can live on in our thoughts, in our memories. They can be present in that way. When I visit a cemetery, I am always mindful of the fact that I am walking among graves and not in a city park. And even though the dead are silent, I feel like I am meeting them in some way. Reading their names out loud and calculating the bracket of time stamped on their headstones I wonder what they might have done while they were still here. Who did you love and what did you care about? How did you manage to grow so old? And why did you die so young?

Remains:

Long ago, reading a Rohinton Mistry novel, I discovered the Zoroastrian practice of laying the dead out on a Tower of Silence for the vultures to eat the flesh from the bones. The idea seemed shocking at first but later, I learned that this custom is a final act of charity: to feed the flesh to the birds rather than letting the body go to waste. The living help the dead to perform a final act of good will. In the West, this might seem like an objectionable practice. But, the Zoroastrians would probably think that incinerating a body in a gas oven and placing the ashes in a jar to display is strange and wasteful. There are so many different ways that the living dispose of the dead. Religious or cultural beliefs usually dictate the method, but more recently, economics of space and cost are influential as well.

These days cremation seems to be most common method while certain religions still insist on whole body burial. “Green” burials (where shrouded bodies are interred to decompose in a natural area) are becoming increasingly popular. Burial at sea for servicemen and civilians still happens. A few small areas of the world still practice mummification. In Tibet, because there is only rock underfoot, the dead are left on a high peak to decompose or be eaten in what is known as a sky burial. Similarly, indigenous tribes in parts of British Columbia and the US southwest used to perform tree burials, where a body wrapped in a shroud gets placed in the high crook of a tree for nature to use.

About Cremation

I have noticed quite a few job openings for crematory workers lately. The pay is high and there are almost no requirements other than being able to lift heavy things (one end of a corpse I assume). Not knowing much about the process of cremation, I did some research.

As expected, bodies are placed in gas ovens and burned at high temperatures over several hours. But not everything turns to ash. Bone fragments remain, and these get put into a “cremulator“, which works much like a coffee grinder. Bone fragments go into a hopper, get ground up and deposited into in a paper bag below. The bag of ash and powdered bone is sealed, labeled and placed in a container to be returned to the family. Artificial joints made of metal remain intact after cremation and, if the family does not request to have these parts returned, the metal is recycled and repurposed.

In Japan, cremation is handled a little differently in that the bone fragments are not ground up. Instead, they are collected and placed into an urn which ends up in a family grave or mausoleum. Family members use ceremonial chopsticks to pick bone fragments out of the ashes starting with the legs and ending with the skull. This way, the person will not be assembled upside-down in the urn. It is interesting to imagine of the remains getting handled directly by the family, something that seems so unthinkable in the west.

Traveling

While traveling in different parts of the world, I often wonder if it is ok to photograph cemeteries. I visit them everywhere I go but I never take pictures if there is a ceremony going on or if any family is around visiting the dead. Once, I discovered a beautiful cemetery on a steep hill in Kyoto. There were several families washing graves and leaving offerings so I didn’t take any pictures. But, I was moved by the devotion with which the visitors cared for the graves. It was my first time seeing anything like this.

I have pictures of old cemeteries in Zizkov, Praha, where my mom grew up, ones she would have passed by everyday. They probably look exactly the same now as they did back then. My grandmother is in there somewhere although I haven’t been back since before her death, around the time of Covid. I look forward to visiting her sometime soon.

Gwangju

After reading Han Kang’s Human Acts (a deeply affecting book set around the days of the Gwangju Uprising and massacre in 1980), I felt a need to travel to Gwangju on my next trip to Korea in 2017. On a bright and chilly autumn morning, I got on a bus and arrived at the Gwangju Memorial.

Other than a few attendants at the museum, I was the only person there. It was a truly beautiful place, especially on that day, flooded with sunlight and the colours of fall. After a walk through the memorial and the museum, I wandered on the footpaths which eventually opened up onto an old cemetery in the hills. It was breathtaking: the silence, the beauty. There was nobody else there so I took photos, two of which are below. I remember the distinct feeling of not being alone even though I was the only person in this huge open space.

We don’t talk about death much around here….

I think about death pretty often. And the older I get, the more I think about it. Never in a fearful or sad way…maybe more like a calm acknowledgement that it is inevitable. I am much farther from the starting line than I am to the finish line, and people have been disappearing from my life for years. More than half of the family members I knew growing up are now gone. Childhood friends have disappeared. Even people I have known who were much much younger than I am have had their lives cut surprisingly short.

Death is always accompanied by the deep sadness of those left behind. But, I think it is also an important and positive reminder that you….you are still alive. Whenever I am walking through a cemetery, I am reminded that I will be joining the club in the not so distant future but, more importantly, that I am still alive right now. It’s a potent warning that time is short and shouldn’t be taken for granted. Every minute you are alive is another minute you are closer to death. Really. No exceptions.

As to what happens after our heart stops and we draw our last breath…who can say? I do know that when I am in a cemetery, even though I might be the only person walking among the acres of trees and headstones, it is impossible to feel lonely there. I just never do. Are the dead keeping me company? Are they watching from somewhere?

We don’t talk about death so much in the West so I hope this doesn’t come across as something too uncomfortable or sad. I would be happy if it was just the opposite. Every morning, I wake up feeling genuinely excited to start another day. I can’t wait to see what happens next. I open my eyes and I think: “Ah…I am still here. Thank you!” Every day.