Graveyards Are Nice

The other day I was walking through Prospect Hill Cemetery in Brattleboro VT and I noticed how a couple of tombstones where knocked over. They looked like a giant came through and gave them a good smack, tumbling them forward onto their faces with their backsides showing. The lawn was mowed around them but those headstones probably didn't have anyone around to bitch about their condition so they were left to be as is.

On the edge of the property, one or two headstones be had been enveloped by the outlying forestry. They seemed to be single lone people, pushed out from the edge of the acceptable cemetery area. I wondered if the lady who was crushed behind two trees did something to deserve being hidden in the woods for eternity.

Years ago in the midst my youthful indignant eco-friendly phase, I raged against the waste that cemeteries are, all of that land that could be used for something else smack in the middle of city blocks.  My aunt, a historian, pointed out that now we may have a way of leaving a trace of our existence with the internet but,unless someone happened to pass their name in a census records or obituary, without headstones many people without recent direct descendants would have faded into the past. A headstone is an instant record of existence and sometimes all that is left to tell you a person walked the earth.

My dad died and we cremated him per his request but a plaque for him remains in the cemetery where his parents are buried.  It says "Valleau Edward Curtis Korean War Aviator" capturing precisely who he was.  None of his physical remains are there but it is still a place to say hello, a tin can at the end of a string to the hereafter where you hope he can hear you.

A cemetery has never been a creepy place to me.  Unless you were very fortunate, many times it is the last vestiges of personal history.....who you were, where you died and sometimes who you loved, if you were alone, possibly your social standing and, in one case that I know, how much you liked NASCAR.

When I die, I hope that I have left enough of my mark on the world that I don't end up in the hedge with my headstone knocked over, at least for the first couple of hundred years. But just in case I will write something clever on the tombstone to make sure that it is interesting enough to get a little extra attention like, "Don't touch this" or "World's Best Toomler" or "Hated Zucchini." Maybe  get one of those benches so people can sit there and get a little peace in the hectic world that I no longer have to deal with.

 I don't care what you do with my body but it would be lovely to have  nice place that maybe they will remember me for a second like I do for other people now. I pray I am not buried in the hedge but if I am, make it a nice hedge of something that maybe the bees enjoy. Make it nice for the people because it is really for them. Because really, really? I will be dead.