Mountain Home Cemetery: A Different Look

Burdick, Dalton, Balch and Gilmore. These are a few of the names that we're all familiar with as residents of Kalamazoo, MI. They are the big names that mean money, power, history and prestige. We see them in various places, such as theaters, public buildings, and on college campuses. Their foundations make a lot things possible for many denizens of Kalamazoo.

But I'm not here to tell you about the works that their money have accomplished, nor their influence on Kalamazoo. That story has been told may times over. Instead, I'm going to tell you about the cemetery they're buried in. Though the names add character to the location they grace, they do not define this place.

When you enter Mountain Home Cemetery from the West Main side, the first thing that catches your eye is the flutter of twin American flags. A splotch of red and white against the green and grey of the rest of the cemetery, the flags disrupt the still atmosphere that envelops you. As you approach you see that they flank twin personalized headstones, their weathered poles shedding rust flaked white paint onto the newly thawing ground. The headstones are large and highly personalized; each has been laser cut with the signature of the occupant resting below. James Gilmore Jr.'s stone displays the storefront that began the legacy. His wife, Diana, has to her memory a race car and the epitaph "first woman invited into the Indianapolis pits". They feel like empty Polaroids, proclaiming something that is hard to understand because it is only a fragment of the story. Curiosity draws you in, deeper into the grounds.

The stones face West Main; even though the traffic speeds by, it sounds muted in comparison with the solemn silence of the place. You can feel the history behind this area of land. There's a curiosity greater than the graves of famous people. Something about the place feels older than even its purchase date, in 1850. The Gothic receiving vault seems at first like it belongs... but the answer is not here. Something more ancient is hiding.

As you move further back into the cemetery, the answer begins to form itself in front of you. The number of graves without a famed occupant begins to mount. Small black beetles crawl indiscriminately over each of the granite pillars and the smaller, faded plaques. The tall Balch monument is covered in dry, brown moss that is slowly becoming a vibrant green. Raindrops collect in the crevices, tracing gentle rivulets down the stone.

Behind the tallest obelisk in the cemetery, a huge white pillar that catches your eye while silhouetted against the trees, you can see the pointed roofs of houses. The cemetery backs up against the neighborhood surrounding it, bringing the death that is so often ignored into close proximity to the cemetery's living neighbor's.

Jesse Deguire, a junior here at Kalamazoo, reminisced about a peaceful night walk, with rolling fog and an eerie, calm silence. The thing that struck him the most was "the light that turned on in the children's playground behind the cemetery." Here, another part; the juxtaposition between life and death. During the day, as you reach the edge of the cemetery, you can hear the children laughing and playing. A white plastic grocery bag caught in a tree's branches in the cemetery dips and flutters in the wind, evoking the image of a black and white still photo of a child waving a flag. But still, there is something missing from this picture. The graves of the mundane surround the monuments to the famous, but part of the truth still escapes you.

As you wander, searching for this quiet something, you trip over a tiny gravestone hidden in the grass. Once you right yourself, rubbing your shin, you finally find your answer. The answer doesn't lie in the huge monuments, or the current collision of life and death. It lies in the worn epitaph carved into the cold red granite. It proclaims the endless truth and peace of death that strikes as you brush the dirt from it, touching the inscription: "Baby Girl 1926."

It isn't fame, or large monuments that connect you to the Mountain Home Cemetery. It is the universality of life and death evoked by that tiny red block, half hidden as the beetles dance across its surface. The value of that tiny life is also memorialized without end, despite the lack of a laser cut, patriotically heralded gravestone. Each life memorialized by a stone is a life of value.

You realize why the cemetery doesn't feel evil, or creepy. It is because this place is full of slumbering families. There are no malignant spirits here; only a plastic bag, caught in the wind, brown Christmas wreaths tossed into a blue trash barrel, that rattle in the wind, and tiny stones that give you pause to remember. This is how you connect with those you never knew. This is why you tread with respect through the grounds where you sleep. This is what drew you in.