All names in this piece have been changed in protection of the families and identities of those mentioned.
A few months ago, I stumbled across an Instagram account (@ghostly.archive), where a librarian named Rosie Grant makes the recipes she finds on gravestones, a long-standing tradition that changed the way women were immortalized. Rather than being a vague Mrs. Smith, women can leave their specific legacy behind in the form of baking directions. I was instantly intrigued by this concept and upon seeing Grant’s Instagram, wanted to attempt to make a gravestone recipe as a sort of homage to the woman who paid, by the letter, to get her recipe etched onto her final resting place. I headed into the 65-acre Forest Hill Cemetery in a thick coat, determined to find at least one food-loving, recipe-sharing person buried there. I definitely overestimated my investigative stamina: Given that the cemetery possesses about 18,000 graves and memorials, it was no wonder that I got tired after perusing just a few hundred graves. I sat down for half an hour with my back to a tree, thinking not about my unfulfilled goal to find a recipe, but about all the graves I had just observed.
After passing a few sections, I had stopped trying to get through the cemetery as fast as I could. My feet dragged as my eyes were drawn back to different memorials. Two old gray stones, side-by-side, had only the words “Mother” and “Father” on them. There were no identifying markers — no names or dates of death. Was this how they wanted to be remembered, or was this labeling something their child picked out upon their death? Who were they, and what kinds of lives did they lead?
Walking a little further, I found a family all buried together. In their midst lay a stone flat on the ground, simply inscribed with the name “Suzy.” For some reason, the stone piqued my interest. Did it represent a mother? A baby? An illegitimate child or mistress? No, no. My imagination was getting the better of me. I did a search on findagrave, a website that lets you search up graves in cemeteries and gives you details about the deceased. The female represented by this rock had passed away in her 20s in the 1870’s. A little digging on Google led me to the newspaper article detailing her death. Her last words were, “I have tried to be good.” This gray rock had a story: a young girl — a daughter and sister — dying in Germany, far away from her home. I stood there for a while.
And then, when I let my feet guide me once again, a polished gray marble with a smart maroon border stopped me in my tracks. It was the gravestone of a baby who had died in 1943. Despite my searches online, I couldn’t find anything more about him. I did, however, scroll through page after page of different babies who’d been buried at Forest Hill. So many of the memorials from the 1800s were so dated that the stone lettering was weathered by elements and wiped of discernable information. A small stone with every piece of information on it blurred turned out to be “Baby S.”, which I found online by searching the location I was at on findagrave. He had no known birth and death. His memorial was unreadable, and if I had not searched online, he would have been nameless to me, too.
A man named Brian had left some yellow flowers at Baby S’ memorial. The message he left on Findagrave said, “I’m sorry we know nothing about you.”
My walk eventually led me to wonder how long some of these people had gone without their names being spoken or read. I started reading the headstone names aloud. I wondered if they appreciated it.
Walking out of the cemetery, I was engrossed in thought. Since I am from India, this was my first proper visit to a cemetery. Back home, most people get their bodies cremated. Nonetheless, my cemetery visit had been calming. Graveyards are sometimes seen as creepy and spooky, with the cawing of crows breaking the ominous silence. However, I thought it was peaceful. I thought of all of the people buried there lying in the soft, brown earth under the orange leaves and blue sky. Resting. I imagined myself sitting near the tree, a skeleton above land and 18,000 skeletons below, separated by 6 feet of dense dirt.
Visiting the cemetery cemented my conviction to make a gravestone recipe. Seeing all the graves, I was struck by how little agency many women had over what would be etched on their memorial. If a woman was able to decide her final message to the world, I wanted to honor it. Since I was unsuccessful in finding a tombstone recipe, my next best option was to search for recipes on gravestones online. Still thinking about those lives with untold stories, I decided to make a dish that I hadn’t seen anyone make online yet; a more unknown one. I wanted to elevate forgotten voices. A few gravestone recipes, like Kay’s fudge, have shot to popularity, but I wanted to give less viral recipes a shot. Some Internet searches led me to find Mary’s Lemon Bar recipe. I could not find any information about Mary online, again reminding me of the babies’ graves. But I would do my best to make Mary’s contribution to the world recognized and appreciated. I’m a fan of lemony desserts and cream cheese, but I’m admittedly a little hesitant about coconut. However, if Mary had loved this recipe enough to put on her gravestone, try it I would.
Mary’s Lemon Bars
1 ½ cups soft coconut macaroon cookie crumbs
2 tbsp. margarine, melted
2 pkg. (8 oz. each) Philadelphia Cream Cheese, softened
½ cup sugar
½ tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
Sourcing the ingredients wasn’t too hard, except the call for coconut macaroon cookie crumbs. I had no idea what Mary meant by that and resorted to buying coconut macaroons and crumbling them by hand.
- Heat oven to 350º F.
This was easy.
- Combine cookie crumbs and margarine, press onto bottom of 8-inch square pan sprayed with cooking spray
A surprisingly fun task; I wonder why Mary used margarine instead of butter.
- Beat cream cheese, sugar, lemon zest, juice and vanilla in large bowl with mixer until blended. Add eggs, 1 at a time, mixing on low speed after each just until blended. Pour over crust.
I feared this step, as my tiny kitchen is devoid of a mixer. So, I rolled up my sleeves; me and my little whisk versus Mary’s recipe that I was determined to honor. I warmed up the cream cheese in the microwave, which made it easy to blend into the sugar, eggs, vanilla and lemon juice. As I worked, I licked the batter by the spoonful and only stopped in order to maintain the integrity of Mary’s recipe. As I mixed in the second egg, my whisk whirring around the bowl, I felt accomplished.
- Bake 20-25 min. or until center is almost set. Cool completely. Refrigerate 3 hours.
As the dish baked in the oven, a vanilla-y fragrance wafted around the apartment; I couldn’t help but sneak a bite as it cooled. But Mary was right: It truly tasted the best after it was chilled and cut up into little bars. This recipe made me appreciate coconut, which is a big feat. The texture of the cookie crumb on the bottom contrasted delightfully with the silky lemony goodness on top. They were a fan favorite with my roommate and friends as well.
However, when I asked my friends if they would put this recipe on their gravestone, the answer was a resounding no. The general consensus was that, while the dessert tasted good, it wasn’t spectacular — not something to quantify someone’s whole existence, anyway.
I imagined Mary, whoever she was, perfecting this recipe: crumbling macaroons and comparing margarine versus butter, determined to pick the perfect base. I imagined her making this pastry for bake sales and birthdays. This isn’t a fancy dish, not one of those desserts you see on peoples’ Instagram stories with different layers of ganache and cherry reductions. It was quick, easy and supremely satisfying. Maybe Mary made the dessert for people wanting to share and feed their loved ones — so that a group of college students laughing in a living room on a sagging sofa had these yummy bites to chew on. Whatever reason she crafted, perfected and shared this recipe for, I’m personally grateful that she did.
In my original plan for this piece, once I baked the recipe I had found on a gravestone, I would go back to the burial site at the cemetery and eat the dessert there. Instead, I went back to the cemetery, empty-handed, for a short walk, retracing my footsteps from a week ago. Making the recipe and imagining Mary as a real, flesh-and-blood person made me want to do the same for the people buried here as well. Instead of Suzy being encapsulated by a gray rock and an old newspaper article, I conjured up an image of a girl around my age with long hair and a white nightgown. She lay with her eyes closed, peacefully, in a bed somewhere in Germany. Above Father and Mother floated an old, loving couple holding hands. Above the baby, I paused before imagining him happily watching “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” a movie released before he passed away in 1943. My imagination may be incorrect — these were, of course, real people with real personalities. But I’ll never know the truth, so these images may be as good as any. I wanted to humanize them in my mind.
There were 18,000 graves in this cemetery: 18,000 lives lived. 18,000 people with friends and hopes and jobs and pets. Many of these people had no choice about what was written on their gravestones. I probably won’t either, as I’ll have no gravestone at all (Hindus get cremated). But if I were to have one, I can’t think of anything better to leave behind than a recipe. I assume verses from the bible are the most popular gravestone choice, but that involves quoting something that has been read by millions before. A recipe is something of your own to leave behind, to keep a legacy afloat when you leave the world.
I wonder what Suzy’s favorite food was. I wonder what she would have wanted written on her gravestone if she was given the chance.
Writing this piece had an unexpected, perhaps unwanted, effect on me. I think about death a lot now. I even Died with a capital D in a recent dream and felt my soul leave my body. If I die today for any reason, not only will my short life become wasted potential, but I’ll also have nothing of note to leave behind except a messy room and some college essays. Is that what I should be spending my life doing — finding legacies to leave behind in death? Children, companies, estates, art, music? Or is it enough to just be when you die? Can a “legacy” be an intangible culmination of the smaller, less important things, like the time you saved a ladybug from your windshield or held the elevator door open for a rushing stranger?
But you probably don’t want to hear musings about death from an uninformed college student when philosophers and priests and leaders and physicists have been talking about it for thousands of years. All this to say, while I don’t know what comes after death, I hope that if there is a heaven, Suzy is up there trying some of Mary’s lemon bars. The influence of legacies left behind for the living can be a beautiful thing, and I hope to make more gravestone recipes soon.
Statement Columnist Myrra Arya can be reached at myrra@umich.edu.