It's October, and that requires obligatory Halloween-inspired posts. And nothing is more obligatorily macabre than looking at the tombstones of those who have died.
Every year we do this. Now through Halloween we'll occasionally post collections of tombstones to see where famous writers are hanging out today.
Today: Seamus Heaney, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Zora Neale Hurston, William Shakespeare
Seamus Heaney:
You know that kid in class that always won everything? You knew they were smart and talented, but, damnit, you just wished you could come out on top once?
That kid was Seamus Heaney. From winning scholarships to attend high school, to winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995--to seemingly every possible award granted in poetry--Heaney always won eventually. The only thing he ever really lost? His life.
In 2013, Heaney fell coming out of a Dublin restaurant. He went to a private hospital to have a procedure done the following morning (nothing specific was ever detailed), but died before he ever made the operating table. Irish food has killed lesser men.
According to Heaney's son, the 74-year old poet texted his wife minutes before he died. Ever the literary type, Heaney texted in Latin (you mean you don't text in Latin?) to his wife "noli timere"--or, for us living in the 21st century, "do not be afraid."
I'm afraid someone else is going to win a poetry award from this point onward though.
Tombstone Notes:
Originally Heaney was buried with just a wooden cross over his plot, but he eventually received a tombstone months later. The epitaph says, "Walk on air against your better judgment," proving that even Nobel laureates can end on a low note.
Nathaniel Hawthorne:
New England writers from the 1800s always seemed to stay in New England. They might hopscotch around, visit Europe, but they all seemed to die somewhere back in those six little states.
Hawthorne was born in Salem, MA, then moved to Maine with his family, attended college in the same state, bouncing around all of Massachusetts working various jobs (like being the official surveyor of the towns of Salem and Beverly, or the official weigher and gauger at Boston's Custom House), all the while writing.
Somehow, in all his travels, he befriended a slew of other famous people. He met Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in college, became close to future president Franklin Pierce after randomly meeting him at a stage stop in Maine, and once went to a picnic where he met Herman Melville before
Moby Dick was ever written.
He also befriended death on one of his travels. While not feeling well in 1864 (so much so that his neighbor, Amos Bronson Alcott [yes, Louisa May's dad], suggested he stay home and rest), Hawthorne decided to visit New Hampshire's White Mountains with (now former president) Pierce. He went to bed one night and never woke up.
Alcott never opened a psychic business, but he should have.
Tombstone Notes:
Buried at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, MA, on Author's Ridge, nearby Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott, and anyone else who felt like going by three names--Hawthorne bucks the trend. And only his last name appears on the grave marker in an understated manner you'd expect from a pauper.
Zora Neale Hurston
When you think about small town living, you think about the sort of town Zora Neale Hurston was born in. Odds are if you know of Notasulga, Alabama, it's because you live there. The town has an estimated population in 2014 of 868 people. That's down from 965 in 2010. No one is sticking around, and neither did Hurston.
Hurston's life was like the worst adaptation of Cinderella possible, with no happy ending. Her family moved to Florida when she was three, and a decade later her mom died. Hurston's father quickly remarried. The new stepmom and Hurston's dad shipped young Zora off to boarding school--but then eventually stopped paying her tuition. Hurston ended up expelled from the school and on her own as a 15-year old. But Hurston worked odd jobs for years to survive, and was determined to finish high school. She did, graduating at the age of 26.
Hurston attended Barnard College at Columbia University, graduating with her B.A. in anthropology at the age of 37. She worked various positions before publishing her seminal work
Their Eyes Were Watching God. But widespread fame eluded her. For every Hawthorne who had it easy, there's a Hurston who had it hard.
By the time old age rolled around, Hurston was poverty stricken, to the degree she was forced to live at the St. Lucie County Welfare Home. There she suffered a stroke--and later died of heart disease by 1960.
Tombstone Note:
Hurston was buried in an unmarked grave. By 1973, novelist Alice Walker and others searched for Hurston's plot and, based on a best guess where Hurston was buried, placed a burial marker. No one is certain Hurston actually exists under the tombstone. Nonetheless, an educational placard is placed beside the tombstone, so by Florida standards it's official.
William Shakespeare
Do you really need a short biography of him?
No. No you do not.
Tombstone Notes:
Shakespeare died suddenly at 52-years of age for reasons unknown. He was buried at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, underneath a stone slab with an epitaph that swears a curse on anyone who moves his bones. The threat (in modern spelling):
Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear,
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.
Two snaps and a twist! Isn't he gettin' sassy?!
And guess what? The threat worked. When the church was undergoing restoration in 2008, the Bard's grave remained untouched.
