All Souls Day

It turns out that All Souls Day is not the best day to try to do a seriation. Do some observations of people commemorating their dead? Absolutely. But trying to get any information from the tombs themselves would’ve been impossible. Why? Because man do the Gozitans go wild with flowers on All Souls Day. Most of the tombs were so well commemorated that they were completely covered with flowers and candles and I would’ve never been able to read off interment dates or names without sheistily moving things around and that was definitely not an option. I only found three tombs out of the roughly 400 at the Xewkija Cemetery that had not yet had flowers placed on them. The same was true at the Rabat Cemetery and there were about 30 – 40 people within each cemetery at any given moment while I was there. This compares drastically with last year when I was there on a random day in August and only saw two other people and very little in terms of flowers and candles. I noticed that many of the flower arrangements had come from the florists I had interviewed and wondered how busy they must’ve been this week preparing these arrangements. Talk about a sales spike.

I’m posting two pictures here. The first is taken in the Rabat Cemetery that random August day last year and the second was taken on All Souls Day – just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

Because the families share tombs it was not always clear who the commemoration is for. Were flowers left primarily because of a remembrance of the most recent loved one lost? Or in honor of all of the ancestors buried there? Because of the family structure in Gozo and the extended interactions between grandparents and grandchildren, there’s a higher probability that commemoration will be done for grandparents as well as the Gozitan collective memory is more likely to include them. Unlike cemeteries in the US…those of the long departed will often look as if they haven’t been visited in decades. It reminded me of Kilena telling me she pays for masses to be said twice a year for her grandparents despite the fact that she never met them.

As I walked through the cemetery I thought about what kind of response I would have if someone were to ask why I was there (though why would you?). I thought a lot about the concept of deceit in anthropology and when it’s appropriate to be less than truthful. I normally don’t have a problem with starting off with a general “I’m here to study Maltese culture” response but being situated in the cemetery as people engaged with their deceased it felt disrespectful to be so brazen. I thought about how, in my days as a devout Catholic I would’ve perhaps gone to the cemetery myself at home on All Soul’s Day. I thought that if someone asked it might be more respectful and appropriate to say that though I can’t spend the day with my own loved ones, I thought I’d spend it with someone else’s. Too cheesy, I know. Thankfully no one asked – and let’s face it – I would’ve told the truth anyway. Then I thought too about my time in Paris last year, meandering the Montparnasse cemetery which has become a tourist destination itself and the difference between cemeteries that are still used for commemoration and those that are frequented by tourists for a different kind of fan based, consumption commemoration. In that space I felt no qualms about snapping photos and capturing images of the tombs and statues. But in Gozo on All Soul’s Day it became difficult to cross the line and attract a disrespectful type of attention. In the end, I resorted to a few more “touristy” photos myself, pulling out the camera for a shot of a large cross monument, a sweeping shot of the lower portion of the cemetery to get an image of the magnitude of the flowers, and a shot of a cenotaph for someone lost in the war in 1942. These seemed “okay” and caused little to no disturbance or disrespect.

In terms of commemoration and performance I couldn’t help but think of the woman who told me it’s not that Gozitans are super religious it’s just that it’s become “their way” of doing things and it’s what they are used to. Life revolves around these traditions and practices and not necessarily the beliefs behind them. All of those tombs had flowers on them – how much of that is from a desire to commemorate and how much of that is from a peer pressuring necessity? Especially given how many people wandered the cemetery checking out the tombs and commemorative items left by others. The display becomes exhibit for consumption – a show of the love and devotion you have to your family and your loved ones. People pass and point out the beautiful arrangements, point out the lack thereof, wonder about the choice of monument, perhaps comparing it to their own. There were those whose number of flowers were overwhelming and others whose simplicity spoke volumes.

On one tomb, the ceramic photo plates, names and dates were listed in rows just as any other, with the font size of the names all equal until the most recent death which was of a small child. Here the family took the opportunity to single out this burial, adding below his photo, name and date a sentence of commemoration, a special prayer for the lost boy, marking him different from the other burials in their family for those that had a “good death” dying in their own time.
The display becomes an opportunity to re-dress the stone, re-appeal to the attentions of others, re-affix and re-affirm someone in the collective memory. In such an insular place the collective memory itself is a different animal – families marrying among families over generations, surnames repeating but not intermingling by the time you get this many generations out. I had been told that Alfred Grech’s family tomb was at the Rabat cemetery – there were more than 5 family Grech’s there but it stood out all the same. Alfred had told me of the inscription on the tomb. I only remembered it because Lino had commented on how long it is and kept cutting off his recitation but Alfred was determined and repeated the first two lines 3 or 4 times before being granted audience.

“Life is but a walking shadow
A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot.
Full of sound and fury – signifying nothing.” – Family Grech Tombstone

Now that I’ve seen it in context and read it in its entirety I will be following up with Alfred about it. Why that one? Is your family and ancestral group buried within that tomb saying life signifies NOTHING? Who picked that quote? And does he like it? Does the rest of his family who will eventually be buried there? It’s a very cynical quote for an island that, “religious” or not, puts its faith in the purpose of humanity and life as a means to the “GREAT” end yet this quote, out of context does not give much hope to that same end, nor does it give much hope in its fellow people, likening all of the players to idiots. Though, in knowing Alfred for the brief time I’ve known him, I wouldn’t be surprised to find his own vision of himself to be slightly above the masses. It’s still a very exclusive kind of quote, and written in English as well which also says something. Most of the tombs in both of the cemeteries are written in Maltese. Many are phrases from the bible, denoted by their listing of which verse they are after the quotation. This quote is Shakespeare – from Macbeth and of course part of a larger quotation. It is from after the queen dies. I’m rusty on my Macbeth. I am not sure if it’s the kind of quote that would make more sense to me if I knew the play better. This too lends to the exclusivity of the quote. I will most definitely ask Alfred about it.

I saw Philip at the post office today and he and I made plans to go to some cemeteries together on Saturday. I’m really glad too because there are quite a few cities on the island that the buses no longer run to so this means I won’t have to pay for a cab. I also ran into Sonja today as well and, after giving me another hug of course, she said that she and Maria (from the Cherished Moments store) talked about it and they both want to take me for a drink the next time Maria can get off of work early. Now that’s even better than a free chauffeur!