The Secret CemeteryBurial sites have long been recognized as a way to understand past civilizations. Yet, the meanings of our present day cemeteries have been virtually ignored, even though they reveal much about our cultures. Exploring an extraordinarily diverse range of memorial practice - Greek Orthodox, Muslim, Jewish, Roman Catholic and Anglican, as well as the unchurched - The Secret Cemetery is an intriguing study of what these places of death mean to the living. Most of us experience cemeteries at a ritualized moment of loss. What we forget is that these are often places to which we return either as a general space in which to contemplate or as a specific site to be tended. These are also places where different communities can reinforce boundaries and even recreate a sense of homeland. Over time, ritual, artefact and place shape an intensely personal landscape of memory and mourning, a landscape more alive, more actively engaged with than many of the other places we inhabit. |
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Common terms and phrases
Abney Park Cemetery activities Alderney bereaved body burial grounds buried Bushey Cemetery Bushey United Jewish cemetery landscape cemetery management cemetery visit cemetery's church City of London CLCC commemorative continued cremation cultural Cyprus daughter dead death deceased deceased's discussion East Sheen emotional English ethnic example explained expression family members father Father's Day feel flowers funeral grandparents grave garden Greek Cypriot Greek Orthodox grief groups Gujarati historic identity immigrant individual interment kinship lawn section living London Cemetery memorial garden memorial stone monuments mother mourners mourning Muslim nature older ongoing Orthodox Jewish parents past plants plot practices prayers relationship religious remember ritual shivah significant social Southgate Cemetery space spouse study participants suggest symbolic talk tended tion traditional trees United Jewish Cemetery United Synagogue University Press users Victorian visit the cemetery visit the graves visitors widow woman women Woodgrange Park Cemetery Woodland Burial