Valentines From Hearts Now Stilled
Feb 14th, 2008 at 11:06 am by Susie
What a neat story. For those of you who aren’t local, Laurel Hill is a historic Philadelphia cemetary, mostly famous as the place where Rocky’s Adrian is buried:
For two years, Kaminski, 29, kept to herself running cemetery programs. As fall gave way to this winter, she strolled the burial ground blanketed in brown grass and bare oaks, thinking of the bones beneath her feet. What lessons, she wondered, loomed behind those faded unfamiliar names etched in dirt-smudged stone, those of the dead with last wishes to rest forever next to one they loved? What happens to feelings when they are buried with the people they belonged to?
In the office, she learned of Mary Peterson, who died on Dec. 7, 1912. Her body was buried with her second husband in another cemetery — but she had requested her heart be removed and interred at Laurel Hill, alongside her first husband, Thomas Howard Peterson. Kaminski searched the Laurel Hill archives for Mary Peterson’s file and found the interment record: It listed only her heart.
Peterson’s story inspired her.
“I always thought I would know I had found ‘the one,’ when I could picture myself after my death lying next to that person for all of eternity,” Kaminski said.
She began digging for more tales, spending late nights researching archives, the Internet and genealogists’ records, copying handwritten love letters and black-and-white photos.
Kaminski wanted to tell these stories to the public, so she asked Laurel Hill’s executive director, Ross L. Mitchell, if she could host a tour. It would be offered on the Saturday before Valentine’s Day. She would call it: “Love Stories of Laurel Hill.”
It’s all rather romantic.
I love the idea. Death and love intertwined. Aaaaahhhh!
True story.
The first real “commitment-y” thing my wife and I did was to buy burial plots together. Living together, buying a house, getting married followed (in that order) some years later.
It’s a funny story to tell at cocktail parties, but at the time it made (and still makes) perfect sense to us.
When it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.