MORNING AT AUBURN: A SHARED BENCH SIT - Katherine Hauswirth
As part of my research on memorial benches, I planned a trip to Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, MA. Not only do I love this National Historic Landmark’s flora, fauna, history, and quietude; I also knew I’d find a wealth of thoughtfully inscribed benches among the hills, dales, groves, and ponds. Many lives are remembered here with tenderness, from grand, marble monuments to quiet corners with modest plaques.
Founded in 1831, Mount Auburn was designed to be a place “where the living mourner would come to find solace and the public would come to find inspiration.” The Massachusetts Horticultural Society had a pivotal role, designing the landscape with care and naming the myriad winding paths for trees and other plants. This was the first U.S. cemetery planned with natural beauty at its core, and it became a model for other cemeteries across the country.
Ahead of the trip, I did some online searches to see what memorial benches I might find there. What came up first led me down a heartening path.
Jill Slosburg-Ackerman was an artist in residence at Mount Auburn, among seven chosen in 2022. These artists don’t literally reside at the cemetery, but during their awarded residencies they spend significant time there, fashioning creations in tune with the surroundings—visual art, written works, performances.
Mount Auburn’s interview with Jill describes her as a sculptor and wood carver, but I learn that she is much more. She draws, she makes jewelry and installations, and she’s a self-described part-time activist, not to mention mother and grandmother. Jill’s residency project was Mourning Benches, and that’s how she came up on my search.
The story behind Mourning Benches moves me. Jill is a widow, and her husband Jim’s gravesite is at Mount Auburn, near Azalea Path. She wanted to be as physically close to him as she could when mourning him, and, while there is no shortage of benches at the cemetery, none are meant to be moved and most are purely utilitarian. So, she made her own portable benches of cedar—lightweight and weatherproof, and the wood acquires a patina over time. Sturdy handles make them easy to carry.
The interview on the cemetery’s website is aptly titled Art and Utility, as the benches are both practical conveyance and aesthetic balm. Mourners can easily tote a bench over to sit near their loved one, but each bench is also an inviting visual experience in a tactile medium. She calls the carvings on the benches “incised drawings.” Some benches also have raised forms to the side of the seating surface. I learn that carving, cutting, and the like are called subtractive sculpture, while the opposite – attaching forms to an object – is called additive art.
Jill and Jim used to walk the cemetery together. My husband Tom and I, too, have walked our own microcosm of Mount Auburn close to home, in Deep River’s own, park-like Fountain Hill Cemetery. I’ve walked there countless times with my son Gavin, too, exploring the curving paths and the markers laden with history and poignant tales, circumnavigating the pond, coming across fox and deer and frogs and a seasonally shifting cast of plant and insect life.
My mind won’t let me linger on Jill’s reality too long—how a walking companion and deep love is later remembered at a marker you visit. This prospect feels frightening; even contemplating the possibility hurts too much. But, for now, I can connect over the beauty of a shared walk with one’s beloved in a sometimes somber but often uplifting setting.
I decide I have to meet Jill, and she graciously accommodates my request.
Slight of form, sporting gray hair to just above her shoulder and amber-rimmed, tinted glasses, Jill picks me up near the cemetery’s bird sightings chalkboard in her gray Subaru. Soon we are trading our enthusiasms for the place as Jill navigates the circuitous roads, and I share my research on a stupa erected at the cemetery.
A stupa is a structure, often dome-shaped, that is used as a place of Buddhist meditation. To me, the stone stupa at Mount Auburn looks like a fanciful rendition of a bell. I learn that a Rinpoche, or Buddhist teacher, erected the stupa together with his siblings. They dedicated it to their late mother. The Rinpoche, Khen Lama Migmar, shared the intent: “May whoever comes into contact with this Nirvana Stupa further develop these inner qualities of love, compassion, and wisdom.” Each side of the stupa is engraved with a mantra that invokes healing to overcome suffering.
The day before I met Jill, I walked Mount Auburn alone. I’d seen the “bell” from afar and didn’t give it much thought, not realizing at first it was a stupa. Across the way, I did notice a wooden bench dedicated to Sonam Yudon, 1931–2010. Sonam was born just three years after than my mother, who died last year. Her bench sits against a ginkgo tree in glorious green, full leaf, and the inscription below Sonam’s name, Om Mani Padme Hum, is a beloved mantra centered on immense compassion.
Only after some online sleuthing did I realize that Sonam’s ginkgo-hugging bench overlooks the stupa that her children erected. This touched me. I could imagine her spirit sitting there, watching her children as they built it in her name and looking on at the throngs of meditators who visit.
Jill and I decide the stupa will be our first stop. From the hatchback she pulls out three Mourning Benches, allowing me to choose the one that calls me. The first has a simple leaf on one corner, a tree thick with branches on the other. The second has a carved wooden form emerging from one corner and an impression of that shape on the opposite corner. I am drawn to the third bench, which offers a generous scattering of leaf impressions—sassafras prominent among them, with its mix of oval, mitten, and three-lobed leaf shapes. My bench is called Autumn. It fits our sparkling, chilly October morning. Jill’s chosen bench is called In Repose.
Jill explains that the handle should face forward, in the same direction as the sitter. This way, the images will be right-side up. Together we place our benches close to the stupa and sit. The cedar feels warm and welcoming. We can feel the textures embedded in the wood. Soon, we jump up in our excitement as a fat woolly bear caterpillar approaches the shrine with a busy, self-possessed gait. We snap photos of this walking brown and black miracle; I share what I had learned about how the striped bands might provide some clues as to the past winter’s duration and severity. After that, we settle in again. Neither of us mention the woolly bear’s future iteration as an Isabella tiger moth, if it is lucky enough to overwinter safely. Instead, we muse about how creative projects evolve to surprise us.
Jill’s best wish for the nine Mourning Benches she crafted during her residency is that they remain available at Mount Auburn, so mourners can have access to them any time they want to sit near their loved ones. We agree that sitting close to those we love, and to the earth, as these low seats permit, means something we can barely articulate. The word “grounded” comes to mind, and then the word “connection,” in the sense of how touch can bring us comfort.
After Jill’s residency ended, there wasn’t a welcoming space at the chapel where her benches could stay housed. Jill lives nearby and has them at the ready for anyone who asks to borrow one. She’s also willing to be there for those who want company as they sit. Unexpectedly, this company-keeping has become a practice. Jill has an Instagram page, #jillsees, where she sometimes shares photos of folks on her benches, if they are okay with that. I tell her these moments she shares look therapeutic to me. I can see she is present for these people. Jill cocks her head—she had never thought of this word in connection to her many shared bench sits.
Jill’s had quite a few conversations while “benched,” from lighter banter to more profound moments, and she has noticed that something unfolds when people sit close, no arms on chairs and near to the earth, contemplating the world before them. These benches see it all—mourning, and at the same time the living, growing world. Sitters are joined by laughter, confusion, reflection, peace, healing, grief, connection—the breadth of humanity balanced on cedar perches.
Jill and a bench companion watched a mama duck warning her ducklings as a hawk drew near. Another time, a downy duckling tried to eat Jill’s toe. One companion treasured a stretch of grass that reminded her of an undulating river. Another time, Jill noticed and photographed a singular leaf above—somehow the lone leaf illuminated on a tree hosting thousands. On a warm day, Jill and a fellow sitter delighted in watching milkweed floss ride the wind.
After the stupa, we climb back into the Subaru, on to more stops and chatting as we go. I notice I’ve brought up my mother more than a few times—this day calls her memory forth. We marvel at a trio of weeping beeches that have nearly overtaken a tall, domed monument with pillars. Jill thinks about how those who planted the beeches likely never anticipated their engulfing the memorial. Together we step into the space beneath the trees, snapping photos of each other and feeling the “refrigeration” offered by this benevolent botanical family. After a short stroll, we are back in the car, craving a sunny spot now.
Some people have chosen poems to read from the benches. Others have nothing planned other than to sit. A companion named Ralph said, “When you don’t get it, sit down,” and I have taken note of this advice. Jill’s page shows him, head leaning on hand, seeming to look thoughtfully at something out of frame from behind his sunglasses. That day, Jill and Ralph were immersed in birdsong and bird flight, frog calls, and soft breeze, as well as in words on eternity and art.
At our last stop, Jill and I are pondside on our benches. We know we must wrap up, and our talk turns to more mundane things—cooking rice and green beans for a community group home, a doctor’s appointment. Jill shares with delight that her new granddaughter bears her husband’s name as her middle name. I show Jill the delectable purple of beautyberries from my phone’s photo library, and also share my amazement at the parasol birch I peered into near Willow Pond yesterday, its low, rangy limbs beckoning entry into a lush inner sanctum. I exclaim over the red-tailed hawk who seemed to be following me as I walked, showing more pictures.
Then it is time to go our own ways. We push off the benches and grab them by their handles, loading them into Jill’s car. She covers them in swaths of cushioning fabric. We hug goodbye, and then repeat the gesture, recognizing the welcome meeting of minds and souls our bench time together brought. We are an artist and a writer who each know mourning in different ways, each trying to capture some of what we sense in these places where sorrow and radiance are interwoven.
Reading about Jill’s day with a fellow bench sitter named Meg, I am brought back to the mantra intending healing from suffering that is inscribed on the stupa. Jill shared, “Meg wonders for how long anyone can talk about death. There is a fragrant Japanese lilac tree overhead. Spring green foliage. Gentle wind. Birdsong. We are surrounded by life here. We cannot speak about death this day.”
Katherine Hauswirth writes about nature, often with a spiritual bent. She has been a writer in residence at Trail Wood in Connecticut, Acadia National Park in Maine, and with the Orchard Keeper Writers Residency in Tennessee. Her essay collection, The Book of Noticing: Collections and Connections on the Trail (Homebound Publications, 2017), won honorable mention for general nonfiction in ASJA’s 2018 contest. Her new book, The Morning Light, the Lily White: Daily Dips into Nature and Spirit, was published in 2023 with Shanti Arts.
Research and writing were made possible with support from the Connecticut Office of the Arts, which also receives funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Photo credit: https://www.mountauburn.org/art-in-a-silent-city-mount-auburns-2022-artists-in-residence/