Artist Is Inspired by Undying Love

Friends of artist Brett J. Blackman didn’t know what to think about his latest job: painting murals inside the mausoleum at Loma Vista Memorial Park in Fullerton.

Their reaction: Isn’t it scary in there? Doesn’t the whole thing creep you out?

Blackman, 30, laughed because those would have been his thoughts before receiving the commission at the cemetery. And before he got to know the regular visitors who come to spend time with their loved ones.

Most are elderly men and women, their backs hunched and their gait slowed to a shuffle along the marble floors. For a few minutes in the mausoleum, they are in the company of their departed spouses, their loneliness temporarily erased.

Ernest Jarvis is one regular whom Blackman has befriended. The 91-year-old visits his dead wife, Jane Louise, daily at her marble crypt, next to the one he’ll occupy someday. He first tidies up the mausoleum, throwing out any dead flowers and making sure everything is in order.

Then Jarvis walks over to his wife’s vault and prays. On holidays when the building is closed, he prays outside, near her crypt. For her birthday and their anniversary, well, he can’t get out the words to talk about it. Too emotional.

Jarvis will tell you that his wife loved flowers, beauty and tranquillity and that she gets all three inside the mausoleum. For him, that is soul-satisfying. This will be my home too, he says.

New friends such as Jarvis have given Blackman insight into which emotion fills mausoleums: love. He sees evidence of it. A birthday card -- “Mom, We miss you so much!” -- on one crypt. On another, lottery tickets stuffed among the flowers for a dead husband. Last year, a newspaper front page proclaiming the Anaheim Angels as World Series champions was pasted to a vault for a month, a fan not living long enough to see it.

Blackman says he now sees the mausoleum as more than a repository for the dead. For him, it’s a place that adds to the quality of life for those still living. He sees it even in mystical terms: When he walks in, he can feel the love, as if the building is almost breathing.

Each week, another regular, Kurt Schiessel, visits Alice, his wife of 52 years, who died in 2001. The retired 81-year-old sausage maker takes comfort in being able to talk with her there. He feels very peaceful inside the marbled walls.

Blackman feels that way, too. He usually works with interior designers and homeowners to paint murals inside houses from Los Angeles to San Diego. His work will soon appear on a commercial building in Corona del Mar.

It’s a career he loves.

But, he says wistfully, if he could paint in mausoleums and churches his whole life, he would be happy. The ability to make a sacred space more beautiful for mausoleum visitors has been among his most satisfying work.

The Fullerton mausoleum looks like many others. Originally built in 1934, the white concrete structure has been expanded several times. It now houses more than 1,000 vaults and spaces for hundreds of urns.

The floors are marble, the benches concrete. The crypts rise from ground level, stacked six or seven to create the walls. Many of the engraved names come from much earlier times: Horace, Bernice, Eliab, Lester and Edith.

Sharon Adams -- part of the third of four generations of Adamses who have run the cemetery -- said the mausoleum lacked a degree of warmth until she launched a remodel as part of the memorial park’s 90th anniversary. Working with an interior designer, she commissioned Blackman to paint two large murals -- one that seems to turn a wall into a cozy home library and the other, “The Good Shepherd,” that is patterned after a Sistine Chapel biblical scene.

Both Jarvis and Schiessel say they’re blessed that the cemetery continues to spruce up what’s home to their beloved wives, especially with the murals and tapestries Adams has installed.

As a grateful Jarvis sees it, she and Blackman have accomplished a miracle. They have made it a better place for him, too, both now and when he dies.

Blackman finished his work about 10 days ago, taking with him memories of how deeply two people can love each other, even when separated by death.

Like the one day while painting the library mural, he kept stealing glances out the window.

He was fascinated by a young woman sitting on the grass near a grave. For four hours, she remained, praying and crying. When she finally departed, she left flowers and a balloon.

A curious Blackman walked to the grave where the woman had been. He looked at the balloon. It read: “Happy Anniversary.”