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#Post#: 92--------------------------------------------------
Ferncliff
DIR By: StoryGod
Date: December 30, 2019, 6:22 pm
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The Ferncliff tour was worth the walk, and complicated bus
logistics which included walking through the back end of a
garden nursery, through more suburbia and then through Entrance
3. There was the etching of Neil Armstrong on the Shrine of
Memories, the first of several real and active (unless they were
full) mausoleums and columbraria. Columbraria were for burying
urns with people's ashes in them. Mausoleums had tombs for
bodies in coffins that one day would become skeletons
archaeologists would dig up after they rotted behind the granite
walls.
This made the two story Shrine of Memories and the three and a
half story mausoleum at the bottom of the hill cities of bone
and ash. Ms. Silurzo, the art teacher, took the students into
the old columbrarium in the main mausoleum and had them sit on
the floor and look up at the ceiling. One girl asked if this was
disrespectful. "Judge for yourself," answered Ms. Silurzo.
Marion looked up and saw the constellations and signs of the
Zodiac painted in gold on a turquoise background over Gothic
arches. There was something familiar about this and then she
remembered Grand Central Station and almost wanted to laugh, but
that really would have been disrespectful.
One girl, with blonde hair so long she could sit on it, asked if
she could visit her uncle's grave. Ms. Silurzo asked where it
was and the girl knew. A boy who wanted to visit his
grandparents wasn't so lucky, so Ms. Silurzo marched the class
down to the main office and they looked up the grandparents.
They were on the main mausoleum's third floor. They were in
matching, faux verdigris urns behind glass. "Just what I want
people looking in at me through the window forever," the boy
announced.
'They look in but you can't see them because you're dead,"
another boy answered.
"Yeah, but I thought they scattered ashes," an African American
girl cut in.
"They do sometimes, but this is so people have somewhere to
visit and urns are art objects. You can find them on ETSY."
"I'll have to remember that in case anyone dies," another girl
said.
"It's good to know."
"Do people buy urns before they die?" a boy asked.
"They can and keep them in the house or give them to relatives
for when the time comes. It's not that morbid and the urns they
make or buy that way are usually nicer than what the undertaker
sells."
"I'll have to remember that," the boy sing-songed, but Marion
wondered. "It would be just like Uncle Niles and Aunt Judith to
have my parents burned up to ash and then throw them away
somewhere so I can't visit them. Of course my parents are not
dead yet, but....." Marion tried to calm herself by doing the
math. She was fourteen. In four years, she'd be next of kin.
"Then fuck you Niles and Juith and I mean it!"
Though they did eventually see twi forlorn children's graves on
the top of the hill and also Paul Robeson, and the blonde girl's
uncle, most of the trip was in the mausoleums which were objects
of art as good as anything in Europe. Ms. Silurzo pointed out
the Biblical and Masonic symbolism in the stained glass of
private rooms and the work by Louis Comfort Tiffany, of Tiffany
Jewelry fame.
"How come I never heard of this place?" asked Marion on the walk
back down Secor Road to take the first of two buses back to
campus. The buses did not go directly which made the logistics,
interesting to say the least.
"It's a local thing. If you grew up in Westchester or New York
City, you would have heard of it."
"I grew up in Texas," Marion said aloud and let her thoughts
drift back to the extra printing she purchased and her parents'
new address in DeLand, Florida. And yes, they were more at risk
in the new sober home because it was strict and animals die in
captivity. "Just hang in there until after the trial," Marion
told her parents. "You'll be OK."
Marion did not think there were cemeteries like this in Texas.
"If you die mom and dad and I'm next of kin, I'll put you in an
earn like two halves of a boat, on half for each or I'll bury
you with a boat on your tombstone, but please stay alive."
As they waited on Rt. 9A for the Number Six bus to County
Center, the conversation turned to green cemeteries and the cost
of funerals. "I'll wring it out of you Uncle Niles and Aunt
Judith," Marion continued the inner conversation.
"Hey, but isn't it the last time you'll ever pollute anything?"
a plump girl with very pretty topaz earrings spoke up.
"You can think of it that way," answered Ms. Silurzo as the bus
came. It wasn't until they were on Tarrytown Road that Marion
remembered Zia. The girl's activities were probably over leaving
the poor roommate at loose ends. Marion texted "Changing buses
at County Center. Will be on campus soon."
Zia texted back. "It's family dinner tonight. Sister Miella will
wait for you."
Marion texted. "Thank You!!!!" It was time to return to the
living.
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