“UNKNOWN”

A couple of days ago, I went out with a couple of friends. We were scouting locations for an independent film we’re working on and made a stop in a cemetery outside of Alachua, FL. We made our way through the section with the older graves and then split up. I always liked looking at the old gravestones from the 1800’s and earlier. The art that went into them, the poems inscribed on the stone fascinated me, but there was something deeper that caught my attention. These weren’t big memorials to ancient celebrities. These were tombstones of ordinary people. I always wonder if they still have living descendants that visit the graves to pay respects to their great-great-grandparents. I doubt it. Anyone in the family that is still alive was never alive during the tomb-bearers life. The only purpose those graves serve now is to honor the memory of people who are only visited by curious cemetery hoppers (is that what we’re called when we explore cemeteries?). I took some pictures and moved on.

I used to live up in Massachusetts where there was an old family cemetery at the end of the neighborhood. I visited twice: once on Halloween to jump out at unsuspected trick-or-treaters, and once more to actually look at the graves and get some charcoal grave rubbings that I would share with my art class. Oh, all of this happened in high school. It’s irrelevant, but I’m telling you anyway, okay? Moving on. This plot had graves dating all the way back to the late 16oo’s, and so many of them belonged to children and infants who never really got a glimpse at this whole “life” thing. I didn’t really think much of it until my visit to the Alachua cemetery. Does anyone still visit those graves for a reason beyond curiosity?

I continued on my walk, taking pictures and appreciated the ancient craftsmanship when I finally found something that really hit me like a punch in the gut by that guy who plays “The Mountain” in Game of Thrones.

There was a headstone made from wood that had since dried up and rotted, yet it was still placed firmly in the ground. Beneath it was a stone marker that read “Unknown”. The marker looked new, but the wooden plank that served as this person’s original memorial did not. I stared at it for a long time, wanting to know the story behind it. Was the wooden marker placed there blank, or did time just wear away any trace of a name or date? Was the “Unknown” stone marker placed later after someone realized that the headstone was unreadable, or was it placed shortly after the burial? Those were questions that there might be an answer to if I talk to whoever takes care of the cemetery, but there was another question I know will never be answered:

Who was this person?

I thought about that question for a long time while I stood over their grave. I was never going to know. No one was ever going to know. That person buried beneath the soil was gone. There was no memory of the things they did or the person they were in life. There was no one to come mourn for the loss of their dead friend or relative, and no one to come pay respects for an ancient family member. All that was left of them was buried beneath the soil: a corpse that had long since rotted away to nothing but dust and bones.

Then I looked around. There were so many graves. So many people had died, and their loved ones worked hard to make sure there was something to commemorate who they were. Would that memory last though? Would family still leave flowers for them and talk about the things they had done? The accomplishments they had made?

This unknown person would never get that. All they would ever get would be people stopping by, curiously observing this oddity, maybe questioning their own existence as I did.

Oh, right. That part.

As I stared down at this marker, I realized something. We all die, and in the end, we’re all forgotten. Whoever this person was — what they did, who they touched, what they ate on their last day — has been snuffed out of existence, and no matter how much we fight it with flashy funerals, intricate headstones, and mountains of grandchildren, we’re all ultimately destined for the same fate. The headstones wear away, the friends and family eventually die, too, leaving behind second-hand fragments of your memory which will eventually break down like an unstable molecule.

We’re all going to die. We’re all going to be forgotten. We’re all going to be reduced to an “unknown” some day, and in the end, that doesn’t matter.

I don’t know if this is depressing or uplifting. I can’t always gauge those things with any accuracy. I can’t even really say it had that big of an effect on me other than reaffirming my already set nihilistic philosophy.

But maybe it’s the “knowing” part that I needed. Clearly, I have enough “unknowns” to deal with. Maybe some affirmation will do me some good, even if it is just telling me that we’re all going to die and be forgotten.