A letter from Romania

A few weeks ago on the way back to Timișoara from Budapest, our Romanian guide Sergiu Dănilă said “on our next trip, we should go to the Maramureș region and see the Merry Cemetery of Săpânta.” Maramureș is tucked into the northwest corner of Romania and a part of Romania Rebecca and me had not yet visited. “Are you comfortable in cemeteries?” he added. We explained that Rebecca lives across the street from one and that we walk through it all the time. It is a good reminder we are not yet ready for permanent residence. “Why is it called Merry?” we asked.

“That’s why you must go and see it,” replied Sergiu. “Seeing the cemetery is the only way you will understand why it is called Merry.” So with Sergiu as our guide we went to see it. And he was right.

The Cemetery

Săpânța is a village of about 3500 residents a few miles from Ukraine. You can see the cemetery surrounding the Romanian Orthodox Church. On the day we visited, the weather was cold and rainy as we walked through what is really an open air museum. Sergiu stopped in front of many grave sites to translate the inscriptions. The one below was my favorite and fortunately I was able to find an image with the translation alongside.

“World I leave you behind so others can live in you.” What a wonderful thought. The dead were still talking to us and to each other. Sergiu told us that’s what “Merry Cemetery” means. Peter Kayafas has written a book on the Cemetery and says all the headstones are written in the first person and present tense so that “the deceased existence continues interrupted but not stopped by death.” But who gives voice to the dead?

The Artist

After spending about an hour at the cemetery, Sergiu asked us if we wanted to meet Dumitru Pop who succeeded the Cemetary’s founder Stan Ionan Pătaș in 1977. Last fall Pop was awarded the title “Living Human Treasure” by Romania’s Ministry of Culture. He is Romania’s first recipient of this award that is “granted to persons who carry, preserve, and transmit elements of intangible cultural heritage.”

Professor Natalia Lazăr wrote the recommendation for Pop: “Dumitru Pop (Tincu) takes up again the original decorative forms and the specific chromatics imposed by the initiator Stan Ion Pătraș at the Merry Cemetery of Săpânța, recreating them, together with the epitaphs with literary valences and accents of Maramureșean vernacular, thus creating a true fresco of the contemporary Maramureșean (Săpânța) village – authentic and original, full of colour and flavour – a cultural space with a well-defined identity.”

I asked this modest-seeming man how long it took him to sculpt a cross, draw the image, and write the epitaph for each cemetery dweller. He said about three weeks. The process begins with a visit with the family who tell him about the deceased. He then creates the tombstone. He has created 17 so far this year including two for Americans and one for a British citizen.

Life and not death

The Merry Cemetery reverses the sense of finality in Western cemeteries… by bringing the personality of the deceased above ground. Vibrant paints and picture-book drawings make the mausoleum a celebration of life.”

From Yoair.com “Anthropology: The Merry Cemetery in Romania’s Tourism Industry

As I walked through Merry on that dreary day, I felt buoyed up by the colors, pictures and words. More important, this cemetery changed my mind about whether I want a headstone. But not any headstone. I would like one that communicates something about me from beyond the grave. Blue is good, a cross is fine, and if I was to write my own epitaph it would begin with “Paul got lucky late in life.”