We remember
If you ask me why I am drawn to cemeteries, I will muse that maybe it’s the quiet, the peacefulness. I will tell you how stepping into cemeteries in my adolescence always brought me peace. I liked walking through the old cemetery downtown in my hometown of Hampstead. Even though Main Street ran alongside, it always seemed an order of magnitude quieter inside the cemetery. Maybe it was. I have pictures from photography projects in high school, studies playing with colour, when I walked through the cemetery taking colour photos of late autumn graves so stark they look back-and-white. I can still remember what it felt like to try to capture the contrast and the pop of the yellow-orange lichen on one.
Julian reminded me recently that we used to drive up to the cemetery in the northwest part of town, out towards Chester—the one at the top of the hill—to make out, or have sex. I remember going there because we were teenagers, and teenagers were supposed to drive to make-out spots at night. It seemed obvious to me to choose a cemetery. Who would bother us there? The dead can keep a secret, and can’t snitch. Where else would we have gone? It was a better place than the lake, with more parking than the town woods. I wonder now what everyone else’s make-out spots were, or whether there were ever any at all—whether this stereotype was just perpetuated by media and yet somehow I lived it.
If you ask me why I am drawn to history, I will muse that maybe it’s considering other humans’ lives, and how considering theirs makes me reflect upon my own. Considering other’s perspectives helps me hone my own, understand more about the world around me, and try to make sense of it all. (Maybe someday I’ll learn that everything is inherently nonsensical after all.) If history repeats itself, and those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, then surely there must be some element of predictability in life though, of being able to prepare oneself? If there is then I still have not learned how to predict, or prepare.
The last week of March and into April 2021, we rent a house on the Cape, Matthias and I, just to swap our same four walls that have become stale after a year. We go down with Monique during a week she has off; we still work, but I take Friday off, and otherwise we just get to enjoy a change of scene and something of a change of routine.
The house we rent in Bourne was once an income-earning cranberry bog, with the bog spread out like a foreign, semi-swampy field next to it. The first night we’re there I wander about the bog, trying to figure out what the small canals dug out at intervals throughout this field are, before putting it together that this was a cranberry bog.
The house’s farmer’s porch overlooks the street, which sometimes gets busy with schoolchildren or traffic despite seeming like a back road. East of the house, beyond the barn, the bog stretches, and alongside it a sandy track where machinery can move. There is some scrub, and at the end of the bog a hill that rises into the woods that forms a natural border between the bog and the main road.
On the other side of those woods on the side of another road is a tiny graveyard, not too densely populated with stones as it were. I resolve to walk around this graveyard to learn something more of what I imagine would have been the inhabitants of the farmhouse, and the surrounding countryside.
I walk along the dirt track and off to the side, alongside the woody edge of the track that eventually expands up the hill so that I don’t have to climb the hill head-on. The hill reminds me of the other side of the ones that surrounded the house I grew up in, the steep Proctor-Drive-side hills that were more loose rocks and scrub than tidy bushes and barkmulch like the sides that faced our house. I duck around firs and the sorts of scrub pine that are so common to the Cape’s foreign biosphere, these Atlantic pine barrens. I do find something depressingly familiar in the oaky underbrush: a littered Dunkin’ Donuts styrofoam cup, stubbornly refusing to decompose in the woods. I take a picture with the intention of playing with colour inversion to make it look like the shocking crime scene that it is, although I never do.
I step through some fallen trees and make my way through the narrow spot of forest that separates the top of the hill from the cemetery and enter the cemetery from the back.
Far off on the northernmost side of the cemetery is a gravestone all on its own, separated from the others and adorned with some flags. A recent veteran, probably, although I never check.
On this side of the cemetery there is also a gravestone all on its own:
RUTH HENSHAW
DIED APR. 18 1921
AGED 3 DAYS
Poor Ruth, poor Ruth’s mother and parents. A hundred years ago almost to the day the Henshaw’s were having a terrible week. What would life have been like for Ruth’s mother at this time a hundred years ago, presumably nine months pregnant, and about to give birth in just weeks to a daughter who would live only 3 days? Did Ruth’s mother ever stand just where I am now, mourning her daughter’s too early death? Or was she the kind of woman who wouldn’t have been able to bear it, wouldn’t witness, and would never set foot here? Ruth’s grave is haunting.
Behind Ruth’s grave and along the edge of the wood are a series of flat headstones, set into the ground. There is a RUTH M. amongst them and I wonder whether Ruth Henshaw had been given her mother’s name, but perhaps not. This Ruth has no dates on her stone. On her right is an 85-year-old who died in 1972.
Farther along in the cemetery is the grave of
JOHN W. HARRIS and
ELVINA C. HIS WIFE
I see you, Elvina. You outlived John by 13 years and I hope they were the best of your life, reduced only to a relation to your husband. You couldn’t have had a credit card until 6 or so years after your death; did you ever get one? What did you buy just for yourself with it?
I turn around to find
ESTELLA M.
WIFE OF
HERBERT D. MAGOON
1879 – 1931
Herbert is to her left, d. 1940. I hope she enjoyed her space and silence in those 9 years.
It angers me to think of so many human lives—women’s lives—reduced only to their relationship to their husbands. But then again, all that we know of John is that he was Elvina’s husband, although that’s implied rather than an explicit epithet. Still, I feel frustration and a glowing rage to think of so many of those lives without any options, with no choice for existence except in relation to male counterparts, no independence, only dependence. Nothing for a whole half of our species to do except defer to the dominant half. A whole half of the populace unable to vote, but perhaps able to influence their enfranchised husbands in some semblance of self-interest. No way to know though, pessimistically, that the men did not just disregard their requests. No way to be sure other than to get free.
We say that and it sounds revolutionary, but on the day that Ruth Henshaw died, women’s enfranchisement in the United States hadn’t even reached its first anniversary.
I am proud that my grandmother’s grave bears her maiden name: BARBARA M. WELCH MILLER. (The M is for Marie, BMW her initials, an excellent initialism.) She is Barbara Marie Welch; our names, given to us, so often our identity, unchosen. I am Meaghan Mariah Cassidy.
Even the way we express this in English tells us how closely tied our English names are to our identity: ‘I am Meaghan Cassidy,’ rather than ‘My name is Meaghan Cassidy’ or ‘I am called Meaghan Cassidy’ as it is expressed in other languages. In Irish my name is Meaghan Ní Caiside, Mark’s Mark Ó Caiside. Granddaughter and grandson respectively. We have identities as grandchildren for sure.
Back along the bog, I take pictures of fungi, moss, lost objects. I wish for a macro lens that I will never buy myself. I run out of battery when taking a picture of some pretty moss, and spend half an hour searching and searching a small square of bog after running back indoors for a fully charged battery, eventually finding it again to take the picture I wanted.
But this post is called We remember for another reason.
This year, Kensho hosts our second ever Collab Week in October 2022. (Even typing the year feels like it doesn’t matter; it could be 2021 or 2023 and I’d never notice. Is it still 2020?) Our first Collab Week was in June, and this second time around only reaffirmed the magic of in-person connection. (Yes those are cute company blog posts about them; reading them brings me joy because I am genuinely so impressed and inspired by my coworkers and the hard things we accomplish together, while having fun doing them.)
During this October’s Collab Week, we are spending a day in Salem. I was excited when Dava proposed the idea, and we immediately started scheming. Salem in October would be fun, and a weekday would be easier than a weekend. So many of our colleagues aren’t from around here; I’m one of the only townies, I think. Folks travelling from our NYC or DC offices hadn’t even heard of Salem necessarily, and were surprised to find it had ‘infrastructure’ and ‘took some terrible murders and turned them into sort of a tourist trap?’ Yes, yes this is a weird town.
Leading up to Collab Week, we start putting together a list of resources in Salem so folks can plan where to have lunch or visit in the free time they’ll have there that day. While compiling it, I add my favourite place to visit in Salem to the list: Proctor’s Ledge.
Proctor’s Ledge is a small stone monument carved into the side of a hill in a residential part of town. You’d miss it walking by, but in 2017 it was dedicated as the site of the 19 hangings that took place during the Salem Witch Trials, 19 innocent people murdered for their property or even worse reasons. (I say 19 here intentionally, for the 20th who was crushed to death was certainly guilty of something, just not witchcraft.)
I had gotten an idea into my head, one of those things that, once it occurs to me, I know I have to do. Earlier in the week, I place a custom order at a local florist for a bouquet. (As a side note, I highly recommend Helios Floral.)
We step off the bus on Charter Street and I have to step into the street; there are too many people. I feel responsible for all of them, but we’re also all adults and I’m not a chaperone. Hopefully everyone can figure out how to split off into groups and do whatever they like before meeting back up for our 2 PM walking tour.
‘Meaghan, you always know what you’re doing,’ someone lies without meaning to, ‘I’ll follow you.’ (I’m just making this up as I go along, everyone.)
‘Yes,’ I respond, because of course I do have a plan for just such an occasion, expecting people to want recommendations, ‘There’s this awesome hot dog place called Boston Hot Dog Company where I’m going to get lunch,’ I say, ‘But I have to make a pit stop first. I’ll walk you most of the way there and then meet back up with you after,’ and I do. I lead a small group up the street and tell them how to find the hot dog place before turning left and jogging off across the street towards the flower shop.
Bouquet in hand, I walk briskly back towards Boston Hot Dog Company. It’s a sunny, warm day—mid ’60s in October—and jogging in a merino wool sweater was perhaps a judgement error on my part. Thank heavens for wonderful Numi undershirts.
Back at the hot dog place, everyone has gotten their orders and is eating outside except Edward, who is still inside waiting for his order. ‘What’d you get?’ I ask him. ‘An OG,’ he answers, the correct choice. I order a vegetarian OG and ask to add harissa aioli.
‘Ah,’ he nods knowingly, eyeing my bouquet as I step back to wait next to him. I have told him about my flower plan.
After eating, the group is deciding what to do. I tell everyone about my maybe weird plan of walking out to Proctor’s Ledge, if anyone is up for a postprandial stroll. Keith, Edward, and my work best friend Melissa join, and others break off to shop or wander around downtown.
I am a bit emotional on this walk, and I don’t know what to do about it, feeling responsible and also not wanting to make others feel uncomfortable. I could cartwheel, but I don’t. Instead I walk quickly, turn around and walk backwards in an attempt to slow myself down, and otherwise goof off a bit. I pop into the back of an abandoned property, then pop back out front to knock the door knocker on the front door, for the ghosts. I choose the shady side of the street. I try to make sure I don’t cross irresponsibly for Melissa’s sake, and I try to act as her meat shield when I inevitably do. I listen to everyone’s conversations, and when I calm down a bit I can even hold one myself. Keith and I talk about Halloween decorations. Edward doesn’t talk about his car. He does talk about how he’s the kind of person who would wind up buying a haunted house.
Proctor’s Ledge, as it is wont to do, of course, shows up out of nowhere, interrupting conversation. I hop up onto the back of the stone ledge and let myself drop into a seat, my water bottle, clipped to my belt loop, landing squarely between my legs. I feel the same whoosh of silence I do as when I enter cemeteries. I know my coworkers are standing along the sidewalk, and maybe they’re looking at me, but I can’t consider them right now. I kick my heels against the stone wall, against someone’s marker, and make sure I’m not going to cry.
I don’t, and eventually I hop up, off the wall, to unfasten my bouquet. I keep the black string that’s tied around it, unsure why, and trash the rest of the trimmings. I hop back up on the wall and take each flower out one by one, leaving them in a loosened garland along the top of the memorial, as others have done before me. As I step through some evergreen ground cover a bee greets me and I smile, having been kept company by bees ever since the PMC.
I finish laying the flowers at the side of the memorial where others have left candles and ornaments, and I stop for a moment to reflect. I feel so many people present here with me right now, Catherine and Afsoun, Barbara and Bob, those who have left memorial tokens, those standing here with me today, those no longer with us. 19 innocent people, almost all of them women, murdered for being rich, or different, or worse—rich and different. I certainly would have been killed.
We remember.