Asleep

I have stumbled on this stunning picture of Lawrence Matheson's gravestone in Mt. Macedon Cemetery of Victoria, Australia and was fascinated by it. I wrote this haiku just as a story placeholder. Perhaps one day I will come back to this story.

*****

When you died so young

I longed to die with you, but

Fell asleep, grieving.

*****

I don't know yet if I would want to write a longer piece about this fascinating story of secrets and love, but here's what is attractive about it:

The Australian businessman named Laurence Matheson had a rich history of the military service and unfathomable wealth, shrouded in secrecy and dubious connections with the Soviet Union. When he died of cancer in 1987 at a relatively young age of 56, his grief-stricken wife Christina commissioned the statue of herself grieving on Laurie's grave from Peter Shipperheyn, a sculptor Matheson had sponsored when he was young and relatively unknown.

The stunning sculpture is performed in the tradition of the best Italian marble carving that Schipperheyn studied in Italy thanks to Matheson's sponsorship. It is both alive, fluid thanks to the body and hair arrangement and static, half dead in the peaceful sleep of a beautiful face and frozen hand clinging to the gravestone.

In Schipperheyn's own account, it is not clear if Christina Matheson posed for the sculpture herself or he used someone else as a model. In general, little is known about Christina, including if she is still alive (as Matheson's second wife, she was younger). There's very little information about Matheson himself, even though he was involved in a couple of widely covered court cases and investigations. Here is one of the stories about Matheson, suggesting that his life provides enough material for a spy book or a limited TV series: