Are you a taphophile?

[lupaglupa]

There's a great article in the Washington Post about people who love to visit cemeteries, which includes the term taphophile. I'll admit that, word lover though I am, I'd never heard this one. A taphophile is someone who, according to online dictionaries, loves cemeteries. @bdtex, consider yourself tagged. The writer interviews a number of people who enjoy touring cemeteries and then herself sets out to see several. There are also a couple of pictures of Matthew Brady's gravesite.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/10/24/cemetery-congressional-woodlawn-green-wood/

 

[bdtex]

If that's what is called, that's what I am. The article is paywalled, but I can imagine what some of the interviewees said. It's a calling. There's a calmness to it too. It quiets my mind and spirit.

 

[lupaglupa]

If that's what is called, that's what I am. The article is paywalled, but I can imagine what some of the interviewees said. It's a calling. There's a calmness to it too. It quiets my mind and spirit.

Sorry you can't get thru to it.

 

[Union_Buff]

This word definitely describes me @lupaglupa

I have visited the national cemeteries at Antietam and Gettysburg during my trips to the battlefields and felt a calmness and connection with the soldiers who are buried there.

 

[Nathan Stuart]

That's an interesting and unusual word.

Apart from being the object of perhaps disproportional fascination by taphophiles, cemeteries and gravestones are also a source of information for history-lovers and investigators of the past.

 

[Cavalier]

I've never heard of that word before. I guess the answer to the question would be a yes. Although I can't say I get special feelings while visiting cemeteries like some people do, I really enjoy visiting them. But taphophile ain't bad, I've certainly been called worse.

John

 

[Tony Z]

I guess that's me, too! At battlefields, my first visit is to the soldier cemetery. At GB, the National Cemetery is my most frequent spot to visit. I don't believe in ghosts/hauntings, but at these soldier cemeteries, there definitely exists the spirits of those who have gone before us.

Now "tadophile"?

 

[John Winn]

I knew the word but I don't use it as it sounds too much like some kind of deviate (e.g. pedophile). I refer to myself as a cemeterian.

 

[lupaglupa]

I think if people recognized 'taph' as a word it would sound fine; no one thinks a francophile is a deviant. Well, almost no one!

 

[Tennessee Union Gal]

There's a great article in the Washington Post about people who love to visit cemeteries, which includes the term taphophile. I'll admit that, word lover though I am, I'd never heard this one. A taphophile is someone who, according to online dictionaries, loves cemeteries. @bdtex, consider yourself tagged. The writer interviews a number of people who enjoy touring cemeteries and then herself sets out to see several. There are also a couple of pictures of Matthew Brady's gravesite.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/10/24/cemetery-congressional-woodlawn-green-wood/

I love it. I definitely am one. Never happier than when I'm strolling around a cemetery looking for someone specific. I even talk to the folks sometimes. They appreciate a visitor, I think.

 

[John Winn]

I love it. I definitely am one. Never happier than when I'm strolling around a cemetery looking for someone specific. I even talk to the folks sometimes. They appreciate a visitor, I think.

I also sometimes talk to the residents. I generally don't tell people about that but I think it's probably more common amongst we cemeterians than one might think. You're not the first I've heard say they talk to the interred.

I and my cemetery pard almost always say something like this when we're done working on a stone:

"Well Bob, your stone is almost as good as new now. People will now be able to easily read it and we won't be the last people to say your name so you're not really dead. We hope you like it."

 

[lupaglupa]

I was told as a child that no one is truly dead until they are lost to memory. It's nice to think we can preserve those memories with cemetery visits and cleanings and profiles.

 

[NH Civil War Gal]

Well, that's me too! Across the street from me, is a historical graveyard, as we call it here. My parents are there and other relatives. Across from them is the loneliest little stone with just the word "Sophie" on it. It's either a baby's grave but certainly a very young child's grave. Definitely from the mid 1800s. No parents grave around it. Every year I put flowers or a silk butterfly on it. I'm sure Sophie's mother's heart was broken to leave her baby there and I just can't stand it to see it alone on Decoration Day.

 

[John Winn]

Well, that's me too! Across the street from me, is a historical graveyard, as we call it here. My parents are there and other relatives. Across from them is the loneliest little stone with just the word "Sophie" on it. It's either a baby's grave but certainly a very young child's grave. Definitely from the mid 1800s. No parents grave around it. Every year I put flowers or a silk butterfly on it. I'm sure Sophie's mother's heart was broken to leave her baby there and I just can't stand it to see it alone on Decoration Day.

I've seen many of those and it is very sad. Here there used to be outbreaks of smallpox almost every year and it would often kill small children. Many times the parents buried the child - or multiple children - and then moved away, never to visit again. So then we repair their stones (sometimes there's cradles and a foot stone in addition to a head stone) and you just can't help but feel saddened. Here's this poor little kid who died in 1872 and just got left here with nobody who cared. I also feel that way about young women who died in childbirth or of some disease and their husbands buried them and left town. We've got three like that where they were only eighteen. The nineteenth century was brutal in many ways.