Thoughts in a City Cemetery

Serbian cemetery, Fairmount Memorial Park. 

A cemetery is a place where I see the constant forward motion of humanity from one generation to another. In the cemetery I regularly visit, there is a large Serbian section. In the 1920s and 1930s, the earliest head stones are written in Cyrillic. Then, they are written in Cyrillic and English. Finally, they are written in English alone. Over the course of three generations, these immigrants were assimilated into American society.

Looking at these head stones, I often think about my journey. I was born in Bulgaria and came to America with my parents when I was a child. I grew up in this country, went to school here, and became an American. My parents live in the United States, but their minds are still in the Old Country. We still speak Bulgarian at home. My sister and I, however, are of the second generation. Our minds and our hearts are here in America and we speak English together.

The immigrant experience in America is similar no matter what country your ancestors came from. In the beginning, there was a period of adjustment and then came assimilation. The first language was lost, the ancestral religion was not kept, and assimilation took its course. Indeed, America is one of those countries which assimilates its immigrants very, very quickly. By the time my grandchildren and great-grandchildren are around, they will probably know only a little bit about my family and the fact that we came from a place called Bulgaria.

Many immigrant communities make strenuous efforts to keep the heritage alive. Churches are built and Saturday schools exist where children are educated in the language and history of their ancestral country. These institutions do not stop the assimilation process, but they act as an antidote to that which can be found in American society and as a powerful reminder that these young people, their parents, and grandparents came from a particular country with a particular outlook and a particular moral code.

In my own family, my mother made sure that my sister and I studied the Bulgarian language. We still speak it at home with our parents. Both of us can read it and my sister can write it. (Sadly, the only way I can write in Bulgarian is on a typewriter or computer. I never mastered cursive, which my sister did.) I taught myself a great deal about Bulgarian history by borrowing books from the library through Interlibrary loan and conversations with my parents as well as letters from relatives in the old country.

When I went back to Bulgaria in 2010, I felt a profound sense of homecoming. I had returned to the country of my roots. However, I also experienced a sense of alienation. The Bulgaria that existed in my memory, the one I had read about in book after book and poem after poem, was a country that no longer existed. There was very little in that Bulgaria of the country I had known as a child.

My return also taught me that I was not Bulgarian, but a Bulgarian American. While I still speak and read Bulgarian regularly, my roots are firmly in my adopted country. It is the place where I awoke to the world. While my Bulgarian background has shaped my outlook and my behavior, my life in America has made me the person that I am today and for that I am profoundly thankful.