SCENIC TULSA: THE OLD DOWNTOWN CEMETERY
On yesterday's walk, I passed through the rather unimaginatively named Oaklawn or Oak Lawn Cemetary (as you can see, the signs conflict). The gate was open in spite of the fact it was past four o'clock and I thought, "Why not?" This cemetery is one of the oldest in Tulsa, and is pretty much all full up; no vacany unless you have a spot reserved in a family plot. I don't believe I've ever witnessed a burial there. The lastest date of death I saw was 1984.
Oaklawn or Oak Lawn appears to be owned and maintained by the City of Tulsa, though I'm not sure of that. Certainly, if your business is planting the loved ones under tombstones in the fields of the dead, there's not much profit in a full up cemetery, you've already reaped what you've sowed. Dumping your plantation of the passed away on the nearest municipality seems like a do-able option. The less cynical possibility is that the land was set aside by the city and has always been city property. But old cemeteries have all the good funerary art; the makers of monuments truly don't do it like they used to. None of those flush-to-the-ground-so-the-lawn-mower-can-roll-over-it doorstops here. There are people born in the 1820s buried here, the earliest death dates I saw were in the 1900s. There was the lady buried in 1984; there were veterans of the Civil War, WWI, WWII, and men who served in Korea, but I saw no Vietnam vets. I could have missed one, I suppose, but that gives you approximate lifespan—or would that be deathspan—of the place.
Do you see the monument slight right of center next to the tree, in the dpic above?
 
The top and bottom together are somewhat incongruous, are they not? A slightly battered, bemossed, and charmingly meloncholic girl of white marble, missing her right hand, is mated to crisply carved pediment of polished black and grey granite. Do these two things go together? They are a complete mismatch, even if the mismatch is intentional.
 
Here are two headstones of men who served in the Civil War. Sergt. Wm. Querry has no date on his stone, but presumbly he lived to tell about it if he was buried in Tulsa sometime after the turn of the century. John T. Ezzell of Company K, 16th Illinois Infantry, almost made his three score and ten. There are many Civil War veterans in residence at Oaklawn, all survivors who outlived the war of their youth. Some of the WWI vets enterred in this ground did not survive their war. Every generation or so old men think up a war to pour money into, and send young men (and now young women) to be used up in it.
 
A lamb in repose used to be a very popular motif, particularly for infants and young children. A friend's mother wanted her tombstone in the exact style of the stone on the right—lamb on top. After she died, my friend and his brother had to search far and wide to find someone to custom carve one—monument companies don't do these anymore.
Born and died all on the same day. Think of this present moment made of all the moments we live between birth and death. Could it not be carved on every memorial stone: Born and died on the same day. In the same instant.
Blink and you'll miss it.
9:39:17 PM 
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