on behalf of those who lie beneath earth part 5: cleaning

Its been a year. After wrecking my knee in England, I had to take a year off of my work in the cemetery, which was really annoying. i was just beginning to get some ideas about the work I was going to do, and was starting to plan it all, when disaster struck. So when I came back from England I had to shelve all my plans until the spring, when hopefully I would have recovered enough to start the work.

The one good thing about this was that there was no urgency to the work. The graves remain where they have always been, and always will be. Time has no hold over the dead. I just had to wait for my knee to recover, and for the snow to melt and for the weather to improve. Eventually, the stars aligned and I was able to contact marc and begin the work again. We had a brief preliminary chat to find out what had happened while I was incapacitated (not much really, except that the IWGC is going to come in and do some work on straightening and levelling the gravestones, although there is no clear timeline on that). We decided that I would set to work on cleaning the headstones, and then beginning the work of painting the letters to try and restore the names and the inscriptions.

I got ready all my cleaning and painting materials: brushes and cloths and bowls, a lawn chair, the paint and set off for the cemetery. Marc had arranged to bring over an air compressor so I could clean out the inscribed letters. We needed extra cables to provide the power for the air compressor, so it took me about 20 minutes to get everything ready.

There are three rows of gravestones, and I just decided to start with the first row, closest to the western edge of the cemetery. I had different types of brushes (wire and soft bristle), and I wasn’t sure which was the best way to proceed. It quickly became cclear that the best process was:

• wash the gravestones with water and try and ensure all the inscribed lettering gets a good wash;
• use the brushes to scrape away any debris or dirt that still remained;
• then finally use the air compressor to dry it our and remove any lingering dirt;

Here are pictures of two of the gravestones in the middle of the cleaning process.

water.

brush.

air.

I quickly got into a bit of a groove with it, but I soon noticed a few things as I was working.

There was a lot more dirt on the stones than I could see, and the washing required a lot of scrubbing. The water lifted most of the grime, but there were lots of marks and stains and blemishes which didn’t come away, and never will I don’t think. the water changed the look of the granite, but it was only temporary of course. It quickly dried. But the short period of dampness on the surface of the stone made things visible that were previously invisible.

I quickly learned that the wire bristles were too harsh for the surface, which was quite delicate. It required the soft brushes, which were both more effective and also more sensitive to the look of the gravestones. The brushes were crucial for removing the bits of dirt, the rogue pine needles and other things that were embedded in the inscribed lettering. they were stuck in the nooks and the crannies and were difficult to dislodge. The last one took a little longer, as there was an ants nest located on the front edge, and this required a little more work. They didn’t seem that keen on being relocated.

Each letter required attention, patient careful work to ensure it was fully clean and free of dirt and debris.

And then I used the air compressor to blow dry the water off the surface of the gravestone, and also to dry the interior of the lettering. Without wanting to make this too dramatic or sentimental, the way the water ran down out of each letter looked very much like the way that tears run down the cheeks of someone who is crying softly, silently to themselves.

I have been trying to capture my thoughts and feelings about how this practice might relate to my professional practice as an historian, and also what I might learn about tending the graves of strangers. It has often been remarked that the work of the historian is a little like the work of those who clean and restore graves or statues or memorials. The passage of time creates discoloration and blemishes and accumulated dirt on these physical artefacts, and if we are to see them as they truly were, we need to engage in the work of cleaning. The work of the historian similarly is to remove all the accumulated half-truths and distortions and other things which prevent us from seeing how that person/event/moment was actually like. And while I recognise the accuracy of this, I think it goes further than that, and is more complex than that. And here’s why.

The surface matters. I am always exhorting my students and others to go deeper, to go beyond the surface appearance, and this is absolutely correct of course. But the risk here is that we ignore the surface. The surface matters. It is our first encounter with the past. How things look, and how they feel are also part of the past, and part of the meaning of the past. The texture of the stone. The shape of the letters. The colour. The shades and tones. The surface connects us to the past, opens us to this other world.

The blemishes matter too. Some dirt and debris needs to be removed. But others have become part of the gravestone itself, and no matter how hard you try to remove it, it just won’t disappear. The work is not always about cleaning, but also recognising the discolorations and the imperfections and embracing them. The past should never be scrubbed clean. It will always be messy and chaotic and that is a part of its beauty too.

It is easy to see the cleaning as the prelude to something else, as a stage in the process. But the cleaning itself is critically important, not just for what it reveals, but because it nurtures in us a set of practices about how to clean, not just why we clean. Our work requires us to understand the minutiae of how we do things, to be conscious of our actions. Praxis makes perfect as I read somewhere this week (sorry twitter person I can’t remember who it was, but I liked it!) Its not just about the cleaning, but about how we clean. The letters were all equally important. Each letter required its own attention. Some letters were easier to clean than others. Some need less restoration than others. The inscriptions were all carefully chosen by someone who loved the dead person. They are not just marks on a piece of stone. there is love behind the letters. And my work needs to remember that human context.

The work requires patience, attention, sensitivity and a delicate touch. As i was doing the work I was acutely conscious of the dead person lying beneath my feet, and also the relatives of the dead who were still alive. Some graves were still being visited by the relatives, as there were some Father’s Day flowers in situ. I felt a sense of responsibility to do this right, to do it carefully, to do it well, and to do it with love,. This is important for me to remember when I write. I need to write with care, and love, and compassion.

I spent about and hour and a half there, in the beautiful sunshine, amid the peace and quiet and stillness of the cemetery, alone with my thoughts and yet also surrounded by memories and increasingly connected to a group of strangers who lie beneath the earth.