Address: Green Rd, Highland Hills, OH 44122
A poem of my father’s introduced me to Potter’s Fields. I can’t locate the poem now, but I remember my sadness in reading about people who had lived their whole lives and then had no one to mourn them. The concept of passing with no one to bury me struck me as sad and of a life lived in loneliness. I’ve since learned that being buried in a Potter’s Field doesn’t necessarily mean you had no one to mourn you, it might just mean there was no one who had the available funds to pay for your funeral.
On a sunny Saturday in May, my daughter and I decided to visit a cemetery to walk among the gravestones for some peace. Lakeview is our normal haunt (pun intended), but we decided to see what other cemeteries were in Cuyahoga County and Google showed us we were close to a cemetery called Memorial Park that was described as a Potter’s Field. While a lot of Potter’s Fields are part of a larger cemetery, Cleveland’s Potter’s Field stands alone at the end of a golf course.
There is no sign to mark the entrance and we almost missed the turn. Even when we entered, we were unsure if we were in the right place as there were no gravestones, just trees and grass. Driving a little further, we did spot one monument and a sign with a QR Code indicating you could scan it to find your loved ones. We parked and walked over to the boulder and read the inscription. It seemed odd that we were in a cemetery with no gravestones and no indication that there were people buried beneath our feet, but the QR code told us that this might just be a Potter’s Field so we took a few minutes and wandered around this serene and holy place. Despite the traffic sounds from the road, we found this small cemetery peaceful with birds chirping and the sunlight streaming through the trees.
We left shortly after, but coming home I Googled this small Potter’s Field and found a 2015 article from CleveScene that gave a little background on this small cemetery. According to the article, the first burial was in 1904 and approximately 18,000 people are buried in this space. As I reflect on these 18,000 people who died in the 120 years since this small green space became a cemetery, I am once again filled with sadness at the thought that there was no one to remember them and even if the truth is that they were buried here due to poverty and lack of care, it is still sad that there is no headstone where people can come and say a prayer.