{"id":27458,"date":"2021-03-05T18:27:46","date_gmt":"2021-03-05T22:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=27458"},"modified":"2021-03-05T18:27:46","modified_gmt":"2021-03-05T22:27:46","slug":"a-wrong-made-right-at-st-michaels-cemetery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2021\/03\/05\/a-wrong-made-right-at-st-michaels-cemetery.html","title":{"rendered":"A Wrong Made Right at St. Michael’s Cemetery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Years ago I spotted a marker at St. Michael’s Cemetery that haunted me. The marker for Walter Weinhofer, an infant who lived just one day, was upside down. I’d never seen such a thing, and it had me thinking it was done deliberately, as a kind of statement about the unfairness of mortality, how most of us take our days for granted while others never even got a chance to experience more than one.<\/p>\n

I did enough research to conclude that no such practice exists in the funerary world. Instead of rejecting the traditional placement of a gravesite marker as a way of saying fuck you<\/em> to the whims and caprices of life itself this was, quite to the contrary, just some asshole’s idea of a joke.<\/p>\n

\"Inverted

Inverted Tombstone of Walter Weinhofer<\/p><\/div>\n

I remembered this photo a couple of months ago, or at least I thought I did. My memory said the inverted stone was in the shape of a cross. Indeed, there is a cross seen on the stone but the marker itself is rectangular. I went out to St. Michael’s looking for this marker expecting it to be a cross, and of course did not find it.<\/p>\n

With the aid of this rediscovered photo I went back today and found that someone did the right thing, and turned the marker right side up. St. Michael’s is not my favorite NYC cemetery for a lot of reasons but they deserve some credit for noticing this and doing something about it. I would guess this marker has had zero visitors for generations but that is no excuse for letting vandals make a mockery of it.<\/p>\n

\"Walter

Walter Weinhofer Tombstone Made Right<\/p><\/div>\n

It would be interesting to know how long it was upside down, and if cemetery workers noticed it on their own or if a visitor brought it to their attention. This is in Section 4C, where it seems most if not all burials are of very young children.<\/p>\n

I forgot that I wrote about this four years ago<\/a> but did not go as far as attempting a photo. The first photo is from 2006. This has been on my mind for a long time.<\/p>\n\n