The monument-making shop on El Camino Real in Colma looks like a relic from another California. Kollman & Mason Monument Company’s weathered, false Western front rises above a lawn of polished granite headstones, each one an example of the craft the company has practiced for more than 150 years. Inside, fluorescent lights wash over shiny racks of marble samples. The phone rings every few minutes, and owner John Bargas leaves his desk again and again to answer the landline in the hallway. He designs the monuments, carves many of them himself — and often installs them, too.
The voices on the other end come from every corner of the Bay Area, and nearly every faith: Russian Orthodox families, Mexican Catholics, Chinese Buddhists, Romani. They all call for the same reason: to find a way to memorialize their grief into something concrete. Bargas navigates each conversation with conviction and sincerity, guiding the mourners in the plexiglass hallway like a priest receiving confession.
“Monuments are not for the dead. They’re for the living,” Bargas explained. “I’ve inadvertently become like a grievance counselor. … Buying a monument and having that monument set is kind of the closure of the grieving process.”
Much of the old Bay Area has disappeared, replaced by new industries and new money. Even the cemetery town built to house the region’s dead faces an uncertain future as burial plots fill up and cremation becomes increasingly popular. But in Colma, business hasn’t changed much at all. If anything, it’s stayed familiar and grounded, and the business owners say that’s what has kept them around…