When Visiting Cemeteries...Bring a Rock or Flowers

We used to live down the street from a cemetery with the ornate crosses and statues, and we would stand in the street and look at the gravestones and imagine that Christ was climbing down from the cross and making his way to us. Of course, during this time (late 1950s), we also thought our shoulder blades were really where our wings would sprout when we died and became angels. You'll have to cut us some slack, it was the time of Eisenhower in the White House and being outside playing trumped anything that was on television at that time. We had skate keys around our neck, and the girl up the street and I would play "Lost on an Island" using an old blanket on the summer sun-warmed sidewalk. We would imagine a lot of things on that island. We also played "The Mummy" no doubt encouraged by that cemetery and the movies that we would watch on Million Dollar Movie.

My parents, especially our mother, would bring us to the cemetery where her parents and other relatives on both sides were buried. It was a big pain and I just did not understand why we would go there to stand on the ground above dead people. Of course, we would be surrounded by the ornateness of the cemetery with its crosses and statues and the like...just plain creepy.

I have always believed that I would be cremated and spread out over the Atlantic Ocean somewhere. I definitely do not want any religious junk, just a party to celebrate the people I loved and the life they gave me and we gave each other. No wake at a funeral home for me with people milling around, no sir. Use that money to have a buffet and when the food runs out, so be it. It'll be the wedding reception I didn't have when I got married.

But something has occurred that has me rethinking the whole cremation thing. Since he was able to drive, my now-adult son has gone up to the Jewish cemetery to visit his grandparents and great grandparents' graves (on his Dad's side). He places a rock on each of the headstones and just hangs out with them. The only person he ever knew was his grandfather and only for six years. And you know what, he finds a comfort there among the plain, but descriptive headstones. I have no qualms visiting there myself -- a Jewish cemetery is really a lot different from a Catholic one...no spooky statues or crosses or cherubs. By the way, both of my parents were cremated, and my brothers and I walked into the woods a year after they died to spread their ashes around my father's tree stand he used for deer hunting. We waited a year because I was pregnant with my daughter when we lost our parents. I am sure my mother was saying something like, "You sonofabitch, all the time you spent in these woods, and now I'm here too?!"

We visited the Jewish cemetery just recently and placed rocks on my husband and children's relatives. My son and I went the next day to the Catholic cemetery where my sister-in-law is (right next to her parents). My brother picked out a very beautiful black marble headstone with a couple on a bench etched into it...no crosses or statues. The creepy factor is still there, however, because my brother's name is also etched into it.

After we got home, my son informed me that he would prefer I didn't get cremated and spread in the ocean or wherever and that he would like me someplace where he could visit once and awhile. I'm guessing the whole urn in the living room to be introduced to the sluts my husband will no doubt start dating after my passing is also out of the question. So now, my husband and I have started talking about what we're going to do. Neither of us, but especially me, will be able to go into the Jewish cemetery. And, there is no way in hell that I'd be buried in a Catholic cemetery (even if it's okay). You think that there has to be a non-denominational cemetery somewhere, right?

Well, it's something to ponder as my brother cleans out his house and prepares to move to North Carolina with his fiancee (which is a story unto itself, let me tell you).