Elliot’s First Cemetery Visit

Elliot has been asking for weeks to see a real cemetery. The context is that he is obsessed with monsters, especially the undead and classics like ghosts, zombies, vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein, although not exclusively (see previous blog posts about watching Creature From the Black Lagoon, Godzilla vs King Kong, and anything from Ray Harryhausen).

He knows ghosts, zombies, and vampires “hang out” at cemeteries from the books and media he is really drawn to:

…the Spirit Halloween store, Spooky Scary Skeleton videos, and countless Halloween picture books we’ve read. Here he is walking through a Halloween cemetery near the Littleton Museum on Oct 10, 2021 — more than two years ago when he was 3 and 1/2:

The other day, Elliot said to me “Daddy, why do I like scary things so much?”

Max was the same way!

But I’ve also been telling Elliot about his dead family members: my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, Uncle Elliot — his namesake. These people who were so important to me and nearly ever-present at one time. Elliot asks if they are in a cemetery. I tell him yes, and that we will visit them in June in New York. He asks to see pictures. I showed him a couple.

He said, “Poor mishpuchah. But you, Mama, and Maxi aren’t dead.”

So, after weeks of asking me to show him one, I took him to the Jewish Cemetery called Golden Hill in Lakewood. He fell asleep during the drive, just like I did when my parents took me to Baron Hirsch Cemetery in Staten Island and Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, Long Island. And we went often, especially to Beth David.

We were parked in the midst of the sign stones (what he calls headstones) when Elliot awoke. He looked around and immediately wanted to get out of the car to explore. Excited. Curious. There was thick snow on the ground, but we spent 45 minutes walking around — often with me carrying him because he had some difficulty in thick areas of snow.

I read the sign stones to him. We talked about the people buried there. I explained they had just as rich lives as us, that they perceived the world in all its glory just like us. That every moment was a gift for them, just like for us. They were blinded by the sun and shivered in the cold, just like us. They had their time and this is ours. But I could not explain that it would end for us like it ended for them. He is not ready for that; he does not understand that everything alive and also dies. He is only 4!

“Elliot, if I die will you bury me in a Jewish cemetery?” I asked.

“But you don’t die because you’re new and I’m new. You’re just asking about that?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

When a sign stone was in Hebrew, I said I could not read it. “But you read Hebrew, Daddy. I see you read it at Shabbat services.” Indeed, I was able to read the “so-and-so ben so-and-so” and “so-and-so bat so-and-so”, but that’s all. He doesn’t know I don’t understand Hebrew, even though I’ve explained it to him before.

“Why do you give flowers to people who die?” he asked. I said that I didn’t know and explained that it was not a tradition our family does.

When I read aloud the beautiful words of this sign stone:

Elliot said, “Teachers don’t die!“

He wanted to dig up the graves. You can hear us talking about that in the video. He asks what would happen if we dig them up. I say we’d find skeletons. He asks if we can, and I tell him it’s not nice.

Finally, after about 45 minutes, it was time to go. When were leaving, Elliot thanked me for taking him. “Thank you, Daddy. I love you,” he said. I am not making that up. One of my favorite things in the world is to be with Elliot when he experiences something for the first time. I got that again today.

Later he said, “Daddy, I never kill my mishpuchah.” I am not sure what he meant by that, but I think he is trying to say that he never wants his family to die. He definitely did not mean it in the literal sense.

When we got home I said, “So, you saw your first real sign stone!”

“Yeah, that was great!” he replied.