“Remember me as you pass by,” the deceased advise the living; “remember that you are going to die” – Memento mori. According to James Deetz (1996) and others, this verse expresses a cultural premise, particularly popular in early America, that most everyone – quick or dead – was woven inextricably into communities. Deetz noted that on later memorials the deceased rarely communicated with the living, stones being more likely to say, “In memory of …” or simply to record names and dates. He attributed the difference to profound cultural transformations, especially social fragmentation. Recently, cultural observers (e.g. Cullen; 2006 Dowdy 2013) have commented on the rise of idiosyncratic “object-centered death practices,” such as cremated human remains being made into diamond rings, and have attributed this development to baby boomers’ independence and “hyper-individualism.” We hypothesize, however, that many “quirky” current mortuary trends suggest a conception of the dead as persistent social persons whose unique identities and integration into communities are maintained through memorial practices. We explore the possibility of an emergent rapprochement between the living and the dead through analysis of gravestone imagery, epitaphs, and objects left on graves in the Valley of Virginia. We are specifically attuned to use of the second-person as a direct object (“I brought you home again”), the imperative mood (“Remember me as the man with music”), expressed understandings of the deceased’s continued vitality (“Swing on, Sister!”), and expressed understandings of continued association between the living and the dead (such as cards written to the deceased and left on their graves). On occasion, communicative expressions flow from those who are “not gone but gone on ahead” to the living, but more commonly they issue from the living to the dead and say, in effect, “Remember to live on and remain connected to us”– Memento vivire.
About the presenterAlison Bell
Associate Professor of Anthropology