PERE LACHAISE CEMETERY
For the two nights we stayed in Paris we stayed in an Airbnb in the Bastille district, the same district that Susie and Todd stayed in a two months ago when they arrived in Europe. In walking around they discovered the Pere Lachaise cemetery, a huge cemetery that was once on the outskirts of Paris but is now in the center. This is the Wikipedia entry.
Père Lachaise Cemetery (French: Cimetière du Père-Lachaise [simtjɛʁ dy pɛʁ laʃɛːz]; formerly cimetière de l’Est, “East Cemetery”) is the largest cemetery in Paris, France (44 hectares or 110 acres).[1] With more than 3.5 million visitors annually, it is the most visited necropolis in the world. Notable figures in the arts buried at Père Lachaise include Michel Ney, Frédéric Chopin, Émile Waldteufel, Édith Piaf, Marcel Proust, Georges Méliès, Marcel Marceau, Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Thierry Fortineau, J.R.D. Tata, Gertrude Stein, Jim Morrison and Sir Richard Wallace.
It is so huge that you need a guide to find the grave that you are looking for and there are a number offered from group tours for 21 euros to private tours for 250 euros.
But the word in the Wikipedia article that sticks out to me is “necropolis”, which to me emphasizes the moldering corpses underneath or inside the ornate mausoleums. But of course people who had these ornate tombs built were not concerned with the decaying corpses, what they were trying to do is to keep the people presence of these people people, who were once so alive, alive in memory. Even the pharoahs with all their paraphernalia required for their journey to the next world were primarily hoping to be remembered. But as we walked by the tombs, many falling into decay, even being remembered is almost impossible. Even with 110 acres the tombs are shoulder to shoulder, squeezed together so that everyone is lost among the thousands of tombs. By now, the people who could remember them are also gone. The one tomb of a famous person that we saw that looked alive was the tomb of Frederic Chopin with fresh flowers left by admirers all around it. But even here the memory is not of Chopin, the person, but is for his music, which is still very much alive.
Or course neither we nor anyone else knows who these grand persons were. All we have is the names and the dates and the reminder that we each, too, will begin fading from memory as soon as we die, which is particularly true of those of us who will leave only a small marker in a cemetery and no music or novels to be remembered by, however briefly.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 