This essay has emerged as the result of a journey, partially physical, perhaps even more so spiritual, which I undertook in 1993 as part of a personal effort to understand the manner in which we as a culture attempt to deal with the loss of young people through the memorials we erect for them. The course of this journey took me to cemeteries on both coasts of the United States, to conversations with many people, and, finally, to what I feel to be at least a partial understanding of the principles I sought to comprehend. My suggestion here is that contemporary gravemarkers of youths constitute a distinct genre of memorial - we mark the deaths of adolescents differently than those of all other age categories - and my response to these markers has led me to two basic conclusions. Firstly, the deaths of young persons are extraordinary violations of the expected and we, in turn, respond with gravemarkers which also violate the expected. With the same passion of the youth who have been snatched too early, we create extraordinary monuments in their memory. Secondly, these unique memorials embody our struggle and brokenness as well as our path to healing. The examples I have observed display a willingness, indeed a daringness, on the part of the surviving families to acknowledge and reveal pain and brokenness in ways that often dramatically set these memorials apart in the cemetery landscape . As such, these creations are honest manifestations of intense wounds. But this is by no means all they embody, for at one and the same time they symbolize a journey toward healing. Within the darkness, sorrow, and torturing doubt in which they are created lies the path to joy and transcendency of the self. 

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