Alexandra Kathryn Mosca — Exploring Life and Death: A Writer's Journey

At the grave of one of my literary idols. The closing words to “The Great Gatsby” are etched into the slab in front of his monument. — at St Mary’s Church.

The Great Gatsby was required reading during my school days, and it became one of my favorite books. I read and reread it long after my school days had ended. Eventually, I saw both movies, the original and the glitzy remake, which, surprisingly, I loved. Living on Long Island—where restaurants with the Gatsby name are everywhere—it’s impossible to escape the Gatsby mystique.

When F. Scott Fitzgerald, the book’s author, died in 1940 at the age of 44, his wife Zelda, then confined to a sanitorium in North Carolina, gave instructions that he be buried in St. Mary’s Catholic Church Cemetery in Rockville, Maryland. But the Catholic cemetery refused, citing that Fitzgerald’s shirking of his “Easter duties” (confession and communion) rendered him unfit to be buried in consecrated grounds. Instead, he was buried nearby in the nonsectarian Rockville Cemetery. Eight years later, Zelda died in a fire at the sanitorium and was buried with her husband. I’ve read a few accounts that state that “she was buried on top of him because Zelda had only bought one space.” This is incorrect and likely written to enhance a story. As a funeral director, I can tell you that’s standard practice in Christian and nonsectarian cemeteries.

In 1975, Rockville Women’s Club members noticed that the Fitzgeralds’ grave was in disrepair. When they reached out to Fitzgerald’s daughter, Scottie, about the condition of the grave, they learned of her father’s wish to be buried in St. Mary’s’. The Women’s Club appealed to Washington’s Archbishop William Baum, who gave his blessing for the Fitzgeralds to be reinterred in the Catholic cemetery. This was a significant event as it fulfilled Fitzgerald’s original wish and also highlighted the recognition of his literary contributions by the Catholic community. Baum noted that Fitzgerald was “an artist who was able with clarity and poetic imagination to portray the struggle between grace and death. His characters are involved in this great drama, seeking God and seeking grace.”

I visited the quaint churchyard cemetery where F. Scott and Zelda are buried together. Other family graves are nearby. Tourists often visit the grave and leave copies of the book and other memorabilia. Etched into the slab in front of Fitzgerald’s monument are the closing words to The Great Gatsby: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”