Memorial to Tanya Burr, 1981-2002

Headstone Details - Part One

When I began deciding what to put on Tanya's headstone, I thought of all the graves I had looked at in the past and about what had struck me as memorable about some of them. I hadn't ever imagined that I would have the task of doing such a job for my own child, but as it had been forced on me, I wanted to do a job that satisfied me - and which I hoped would have satisfied Tanya. 

She would have liked 'unique', and she would have expected it to have been incredibly expensive - probably complete with a huge marble angel statue or the like. Fortunately Palmerston North City Council has height and width restrictions, so I needn't worry forevermore about the lack of a two metre high angel as is on another well-known old family grave at Terrace End Cemetery. 

She would also have guarded her fake flowers and ornaments jealously from anyone who came near them with light-fingered thoughts on their minds. Guess why she would have done that?? ;-)

I am a historian with a 'thing' about old cemeteries - albeit that Tanya had little time for exploring them other perhaps than looking around a couple in Norway. I was the original initiator as 'angry activist' - with the late Palmerston North City Archivist, Ian Matheson, who dreamed up the idea - in the founding around 1990 of the 'Friends of Terrace End Cemetery', the old cemetery that served Palmerston North from the 1870s. 

That cemetery was duly replaced in 1927 by Kelvin Grove Cemetery, which is where Tanya is buried. Ironically and sadly, Ian Matheson is buried head-to-head with her in the next row. He died from cancer two months before Tanya's death, and so when she was killed I asked if Tanya could be buried near him. I didn't know where her grave would be until we arrived to bury her though. 

They certainly knew of each other, even though they only knew this through Ian and I discussing our sometimes stroppy and headstrong teenage kids at various points over the years. So there has always been something comforting about knowing Tanya is close by someone I knew very well - who also knew a thing or two about stroppy headstrong kids. Ian would have been very happy to contribute too I think. He would have been very upset at Tanya's death.

Ian was the perfect tour guide for walks around Terrace End Cemetery. For a start he had the right voice projection for the job - which I don't have. He made the people referred to in the headstone texts 'come to life' and everyone enjoyed his very well-informed talks. There perhaps was no better tour though than the one in May 1997 (see below), where with scythe in hand, he strode purposefully around the cemetery dressed and performing as the 'Grim Reaper', while I, as 'the Grim Reaper's Assistant', attended to the stragglers!!!! 

After the story appeared in the Evening Standard, we got in a small amount of trouble (i.e. not with the council) for being in the cemetery after the official closing time - and a slightly bigger bit of trouble for (so some said) drinking alcohol there as well. We chose to say we drank all our hot mulled wine on the roadside! We had in fact needed it to ward off the cold and just holding the warm little cups helped enormously. We were accused of setting a bad example - which we enjoyed enormously (but discreetly) under the circumstances. I even spoke about it at Ian's funeral - and then returned to my seat alongside the guy who had got upset about it. He wasn't worried about it by then either.

In addition to occasions such as that memorable night, I also helped research a couple of stories for the former TV series 'Epitaph', a programme I found very interesting as it explored the often tragic stories alluded to in the texts of headstones - namely the epitaphs to the occupants. Unfortunately deaths that draw attention in such a manner are often not those of long happy, successful lives. They are even less likely to involve 'happy' deaths - assuming there is such a thing. And Tanya's death was certainly no exception.

So in part the text on Tanya's headstone was created to be something both Ian and I would have found interesting and eye-catching as we or other like-minded people had perhaps strolled by. I also wanted people in the future to know that there had been a tragedy and that some people had been very affected by the wastefulness of it.

I believe Tanya would have argued determindly in favour of 'getting the message across' too. I think she would have been happy with the result - especially as it included photos of and text about her cats. If nothing else, it had to include cats! The friendly argument we had here two days before her death (when I used up her film and in a couple of cases took something other than cats) made that point very clear.

From my own work, I know that most headstones show the bare minimum (i.e names, dates etc.), however, this tends to result in anonymity as no-one other than family ends up looking at the words or knowing who the person was. Photos on graves do something to alleviate this, but usually they are just portraits, perhaps with an etched picture or design for some individuality. 

These pictures can tell something of the person they represent. For example, on our parents' (Tanya's maternal grandparents) grave about 200 metres from Tanya's, we have a red rose to show something Mum loved, and a picture of the face of Dad's favourite Friesian cow 'Princess', to show that he had been a dairy farmer. We had mentioned putting a cartoon of a cow and old farmer leaning on a fence, but he vetoed that in life and suggested 'Princess'. We teasingly told we would wait till he died and put on whatever we liked - but we complied. The family of another old dairy farmer have installed an actual set of milking cups on his grave!

Other headstones near Tanya's have also developed an array of variation in design and decoration - with perhaps none being more so than some other young people who died tragically, whose families have decorated them with a number of pictures of the activities and objects they loved. These range from motorbikes and cars, through to rugby and pool balls, dart boards and even the preferred brand of beer!

In some cases, perhaps Tanya's headstone influenced the decision to consider adding these things en masse, just as the large picture tile on the headstone of a schoolboy who suicided about two years before Tanya's death, led to the picture tiles on Tanya's grave. Either way, the most recent headstones are probably some of the most interesting and pictorial 'cemetery architecture' in the whole cemetery - especially in the modern lawn cemetery section of it.