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During a trip to Europe several years ago, I ventured into Les
Catacombes de Paris. These are the quarries under the districts
of the city where skeletons from the cemeteries were piled from
the late 18th century. 30 to 40 generations of Parisians share this
common burial place. Today, a tourist can walk through these arena-sized
caverns that are strung together one after another, on a pathway
several blocks long, lined with human remains. Carefully assembled
with skulls and bones in regular interlocking patterns, the pathway
walls were built by the workers who brought these remains in from
the cemeteries, and during this walk, the passing visitor is watched
by thousands of empty eye sockets. Standing on tip-toes, and with
the aid of a flashlight, a visitor can see the area behind the walls
piled do a depth of 5 feet or more with bones. Millions of bodies!
I went alone since Janet hastily declined my unusual invitation. It was a weekday, and I was the first person entering in the morning. I did not have any expectations, but I was apprehensive: Would it be smelly? Scary? How would I react to being inside a grave, touching and being so close to the dead? I took my time going through here, resisting the urge to walk briskly. It was uncomfortable, but also strangely provoking. I was repulsed and drawn at the same time, and found myself examining individual skulls in detail. One thing that kept coming back to me was that this represented so many individuals. I touched an adult skull and thought that this was someone's child and maybe someone's parent, and that I was holding the only earthly remnant of that individual. I tried to imagine the life long gone, the childhood, the adolescence, the loves, struggles and disappointments, and thought of the really limited field of view that I hold of my own ancestry; I know my parents, and by stories and photographs, their parents. Beyond that, it is a fog. This effort at genealogy is my effort to scratch through some of that fog. It is a pitiful scratch, for sure, when one considers the multitudes that gone before us in this generational parade. So, if I am successful, I may be able to trace the branches of my family back a few hundred years, but at that point, whatever it may be, all paths will lead to my particular family's Les Catacombes, and at that point, all I have is that skull to hold. |
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