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Inspiration
from Stones: Fact-based Fiction
by Rachel
Kingsley
It has been
about three months now that I’ve been going to the cemetery for inspiration.My
publishers have been pressuring me about deadlines, and I’ve got to produce
a first draft of the novel before the end of April.Once
I get started I have no trouble cranking out pages, that’s what writers
do, but I need the initial inspiration to begin, and it has been eluding
me.I’ve often wondered where inspiration
comes from.Is it something that
happens to you, or does it come from within.Whatever
the elusive devil of inspiration is, I was hoping to find it in Mount Hope
Cemetery.I thought that if I went
to the cemetery, walked around its rolling hills, its trees, grass, and
tombstones, I would get some ideas for my book.You
can’t write a book out of nothing.You
need characters and stories, and it seemed that the cemetery had a lot
of stories to tell.I wanted to believe
that those stones could speak to me, that they could whisper a story to
my ear on the breeze.
It
was a beautiful place, really.Funny
that one of Rochester, New York’s greatest treasures was a field full of
dead people, but it was a treasure.Mount
Hope Cemetery was a place in which to walk and think.It
was like a country haven amidst a dreary city landscape, or something like
that.I wondered if its builders
had any foresight into the impact the cemetery would have in the future.It
has influenced the city, the people, the university so close to its gates,
and certainly my life.Did you know
that they were building one of the first great American Victorian cemeteries?Did
they know that it would stand the test of time to inspire generations of
visitors?Ah, it was precisely for
inspiration that I had been going there.The
cemetery was designed to handle an overflow of dean from the cholera epidemic
in 1832, but it was filled with so much more than that.It
was filled with lives, and families, and famous people, and art, and stories.By
God, did I need a story!My publisher
wasn’t accepting my excuses anymore.Deadlines
are deadlines, and they eventually have to be met no matter how far you
have stretched their limits.
After
months of aimless walking around Mt. Hope Cemetery searching for my lost
inspiration, my mind was cluttered with beautiful images:sculpture,
angels, crosses, grandiose mausoleums, eternal flames burning in novenas,
photographic images of the deceased petrified on gravestones, war veterans,
untended graves with cracked or fallen stones, Biblical inscriptions, and
foreign tongues.The pace was a
wealth of information and stimuli.Still,
I was dry with empty pages.No story,
no lead.I felt like I had limitless
possibilities, but I had found no beginning.
Still
I had found my favorite gravestone, or stones, really, because it was a
family plot.I think I liked it best
because it was simple, which meant that it left a lot to the imagination,
and it sparked my curiosity.The
Cobb plot.Perhaps I like it because
it triggered the memory of my fifth grade teacher, Mary Cobb.She
took me to the beach and an art museum one summer because she thought I
was a promising student.Whatever
the reason, I wanted to know more about the Cobb family.I
wanted to know how they lived and worked, how they died, why they chose
the plot and its stones.It was a
beautiful place to spend eternity, and a stunning tribute to their life
on earth.The Cobb family plot was
a large Celtic cross surrounded by the shade of two evergreen trees overlooking
the road, and muted by a large elm tree looming above, one of the few survivors
of last summer’s wind storms.It
seemed to fit perfectly there, in Lot 23 of Section BB on the corner of
Grove and Adlington Avenues.Each
family headstone was a simple marker with only their names and dates of
existence carved into ribbed granite, as if that was all they needed to
pay tribute to their existence and stand the test of eternity.
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I
had to find more about this family.There
had to be a story here, and if not, at least it could inspire me to write
my own.I went to the Mount Hope
Cemetery Office to see what they could tell me.The
woman behind the desk acknowledged my presence with not so much as a sideways
glance though she heard me walk up the porch steps and in through the screen
door.
“I’ll
be with you in just a minute.”Her
tone was rough, and the minute was long, but I was convinced that today
I could bring out anybody’s softer side.The
sun was shining and summer was creeping in.No
need to be grouchy today.When the
woman finally looked up, I told her that I was a novelist looking for information
on a grave plot for my latest book.“Oh,”
she said.“What kind of novels do
you write?I just adore Danielle
Steele!”How was I to tell her I
abhorred the money-grubbing harlequin style?I
decided to avoid the question.
“Oh,
I write about whatever happens to inspire me, and right now it’s the Cobb
plot on the corner of Grove and Adlington.What
information about the graves can this office provide?”
“Well,
you really need an appointment, but if you give me the name and date of
death I can look it up in the books for you,” she replied, sounding a little
gruff and disappointed that I would not be giving her an autographed copy
of my latest tearjerking romance.
“That
would be wonderful,” I thanked her.I
gave her the name of the most recent headstone:Tyler
Perry Cobb, 1917-1991.She frowned
and said she probably couldn’t give out that information because it was
too recent.I thought it interesting,
that there were stages of death and proper etiquette bestowed upon the
more recently deceased.Tyler’s wife
was still alive:Ann Wolcott Cobb
1919- engraved on the stone beside her husband.Maybe
I could find this woman and call her up.No,
that would be too awkward.It is
the mystery that intrigued me about this plot, and, personally, I would
never welcome a phone call from a stranger inquiring about my dead husband.So
I have the office woman the other names to see what I could find, what
secrets would be revealed.
Erastus
I. Guller, MD lived from 1894-1971, died of natural causes in Watertown,
NY at 77 years old, and was buried on January 23, 1971.I
thought of this man and his medical profession at the turn of the century
and how many changes he must have seen in his lifetime.The
biggest change of all, though, must have been the death of his wife, Catherine
O. Cobb, buried next to him.She
lived from 1883-1948, dying at 65 years, 1 month, and 22 days of age.I
found out that she died right here in Rochester on 253 Alexander St. of
arterial sclerosis and natural causes.She
was buried on the 23rd of October, 1948, a full 23 years and
3 months ahead of her husband.I
imagined what it must have bee like for her husband, with all of his medical
training, not to have been able to save her, and then to live so long alone
after her death.Maybe this is why
he moved out of Rochester to a more peaceful life in Watertown, to meet
a more peaceful death there.I was
definitely getting ideas for my novel now, but the best was yet to come.Clarence
S. Cobb, son of Angeline M. and Amos H. Cobb, February 21, 1882, to June
10, 1918.He died at 36 years old
in Fairport, NY as the result of a bullet wound to the head.I
could only imagine the scandal involved here.A
murder in the quiet suburb of Fairport!Or
perhaps a hunting accident, or a family dispute.The
possibilities were endless, and my creativity was feeling sparked again.I
thanked the woman at the office and walked back to the Cobb plot to think.
I
set my thinking towards the large Celtic cross.The
cross is a symbol of victory for Christians, and the Celtic cross is a
strikingly recognizable symbol of European Christianity.It
was approximately 8 feet high and carved of sturdy dark gray stone.It
was characteristically ribbed like the smaller headstones, but also incorporated
more intricate patterns on the front and back.Relief
globes rose from the center and points of the cross.The
center globe was surrounded by a ring of waves, setting me to imagine that
the whole thing floated over on the Atlantic all the way from Ireland.I
also imagined the implications of the circle representing eternity and
perfection.The rest of the cross
contained intricate weaving and infinite loopings.At
the bottom was a row of triangles (perhaps representing the Holy Trinity)
and the strong impression of the family’s last name Cobb.At
the base was the simple yet complex inscription, “I am the resurrection
and the life.”It was obviously Biblical
and Christian, but it perplexed me.Was
“I” the cross, the deceased, Jesus?I
didn’t completely understand it, yet its meaning must have been important
to the family because it was the only inscription.
Another
point of perplexity was the strange symbol on the individual headstones.It
appeared to be a cross, yet not cross at all.It
was more like the capital letters “P” and “X” superimposed on top of each
other.I assumed it must have been
Christian, but I needed to search it out.After
a little detective work on the internet, I found that the University of
Rochester Religion and Classics homepage contained a variety of religious
symbols including the strange cross.It
was actually a Chi-Rho, one of the earliest Christian cross symbols.Formed
from the Greek letters Chi and Rho, it symbolized Christ, the crucifixion,
and Christianity in its earliest form.Why
would the Cobbs choose to use such an ancient Christian symbol, as well
as the Celtic cross, with the concise inscription?Maybe
I’d never solve this mystery, but I found myself sufficiently inspired,
and hurried home to begin my latest novel, to be entitled “Speaking Stones.”I
had found that they really can talk, you just have to be able to imagine
and hear their stories.
Back to the Speaking Stones Main Site