Fully aware that you are alive and well, you are ready to make the hike up the gently rolling hill leading to # 2042, your awaiting burial plot. You think you are standing on the very, very, very spot you will inhabit most probably for eternity. You wait for some existential experience. Nothing out of the ordinary happens. You stare at the view. It is beautiful and serene. You still wait for something extraordinary to happen, something to give you a rush. You’d get more of a rush from an espresso coffee than you have standing on your own GRAVE! What did you expect? Lots.
This spot of burial earth and funeral expenses are already paid for and inscribed in the annals of Mount Sinai Memorial Parks and Mortuary. The money paid into this death account makes 6% interest as long as you live. Tell me where you can get that guarantee in today’s world?
When you are standing in the exact spot depicting your eternal resting place, you try and analyze death realizing nearly in the same thought that you have to analyze life first. Langston Hughes states that – “Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid”
Don’t we try to live to the fullest? Don’t we tell ourselves to live, be free, smell the roses, be observant and enjoy? Constantly, so why then do we often times find our thoughts on death in a quagmire? Are we not conscious enough or too conscious? Is there a happy medium when discussing your life and death? No, it requires stamina and concentration. It requires the help of others. If you start a discussion of life and death and our preparations for both, with friends soon, I imagine they will be inching away from you and bolting, maybe.
I imagined myself dead for a moment while I stood on my spot of land where I will be more than six feet under for perpetuity. Oh, the view is spectacular. Perhaps I will enjoy this view from this well sought after internment spot. I will wake each morning to sunshine, visitors, freshly mown grass, shadows and a sprawling view. Heck I will. I will be so far down under; I will not see, feel or hear anything. I will be gone. Thanks for the hope of the view and the hope of eternity in this lovely paid for piece of real estate, but it just isn’t the truth. Standing on the spot where I will be interned meant nearly nothing to me except for the reality and eventuality of my death someday. Big deal, I think about death as an eventuality every day whether I am standing on the exact spot or not. I don’t have to be there until some time after death, so I will dwell among the living, and when I visit those whose time has come to be permanent guests of the park while I am alive, I will exalt them and in death I will join them.
Please add your thoughts and ideas on this topic. I found it hard to be open and think of everything.
Sheilaclapkin's Blog; 
Apr 08, 2013 @ 20:29:31
The spot is lovely. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. You wrote very compellingly about the mixed emotions that one would naturally feel at that location.
Apr 09, 2013 @ 15:15:45
Hello Sheryl,
Thank you for reading and your comment, so true. I appreciate your sentiments.
I enjoy & love your blog. Keep it up. What a legacy your grandmother left for you. But it took you and your creative spirit to make it live again.
Sheila
Apr 19, 2013 @ 17:31:26
Funny, i was just visiting my parents’ place of rest last Thursday. It was mixed as such visits must be. Do they know I’m here? Not likely? Am I really present? I try to be and fix my thoughts on them, but it’s fleeting. I watch the traffic at the Home of Peace which isn’t really peaceful, bordering the Santa Anna Fwy. I note the weeds and the brown grass. I count up all the relatives in this place, I search for my Uncle Leo’s and Aunt Irma’s graves way over on the other side. It must have been peaceful once, but the Long Beach Fwy. girds that side too. And there is my Opa Gustav’s grave. Is he lonely here away from his Josephine buried across two continents in Germany? At least she has one, unlike so many of my Father’s relatives who have no remains except the dust that drifts over Auschwitz, Poland, Birkenau, Therezienstadt on windy days.
Oh, and there are Great Uncle Max and Aunt Helene Felsenthal. They got to America just before the Holocaust. Settled on Walnut Street in Huntington Park. Uncle Max lived to be 91!
I set stones on each of the relatives’ graves. My mother’s stone is ornamented with carved roses. I should have brought a real bouquet, but I didn’t.
And yes, the feelings are diffuse, death is too hard.
Apr 20, 2013 @ 10:05:53
Dear Josie,
Your words are strong and so heartfelt. Your perceptions on death add depth and an understanding many of us will not reach except through your eyes. Do they know we come, I think the power is in our knowing we are there.
Love to you,
Sheila
May 02, 2013 @ 19:45:15
Whom but you could make even death sound enticing with your well-thought-out wording. I’ll be stuck in a marble covered wall with a view of a water fountain.n Not that I’ll notice it or anything else huh? And we’re not making 6% either. You got a DEAL!