According to the saying, “A diamond is forever.” That’s why engagement rings have diamonds – they symbolize permanence. But I know a rock that makes a diamond look as fleeting as a Popsicle on a summer sidewalk, and that’s a tombstone.
My husband and I just bought cemetery plots.
This shouldn’t be a big deal – after all, I’m on our church cemetery board. But I must admit the experience has me a bit rattled. When you buy a grave, you’re coming face-to-face with some major-league, weighty truths:
- I am a grownup. I can think of a million things I’d rather spend our hard-earned cash on: designer clothes, exotic vacations or cosmetic surgery. We could have bought a sophisticated condo in the city or a beach-front time-share in Waikiki. Instead, our secondary residence is a little getaway in Forest Lawn. I’m hoping 57-year-old Peg’s righteous glow of self-satisfaction will eventually outshine inner-21-year-old Peg’s disgust at such a sucky use of money.
- I am going to stay here forever. My parents dragged us around the cemeteries in my hometown every Memorial Day when we were kids. We weeded around the headstones while Mom told us how the people under them fit into our family tree. Now we’ve got a place for our kids to weed and recite our lineage. Nothing tethers you to an area like being permanently planted in the ground there.
Don’t get me wrong; I like it fine here. But I’ve always held the secret fantasy of living somewhere a bit more exotic. I could see myself in a hut on a tropical island, living off fish and coconuts (supplemented by a monthly supply boat full of Little Debbie Snack Cakes.) Fat chance of that happening now. We’ve done the last real estate deal you’ll ever do.
- I am going to be with this person forever. Most of us mean it when we take our marriage vows; I certainly did, and after almost 35 years I think it’s safe to say this relationship is going to last. But there’s always that teeny, tiny voice in the back of one’s head whispering, “If this doesn’t work, I’m outta here!” No more. You don’t know the meaning of the word “commitment” until you agree to lie side-by-side with someone for eternity.
- I am going to die. We’re all going to die, obviously. I don’t have any immediate plans to do so, but who knows? I believe that life is a preparation for eternal happiness with God, yet knowing something intellectually and believing in hazy euphemisms is entirely different from coming face-to-face with the reality that I am personally going to shuffle off this mortal coil. My essence is going to flee my body (hopefully accompanied by angels singing me to my heavenly reward) and my earthly remains are going into a box for the final move to our cozy, little hideaway, complete with pastoral views.
Any one of these concepts is tough to handle; all of them stacked together makes a reality sandwich that’s hard to swallow.
I’ve become more reconciled to the idea now that we’ve signed on the dotted line. I can even see a number of benefits to this arrangement. Snow removal and yard maintenance are constant hassles at our current home in the country. When we move to our new place, we’ll be able to lie back, relax, and let someone else mow the grass. Right over our heads.
Peg-o-Leg's Ramblings 
Ha! You just did your kids a huge favor. Death is stressful enough without having to figure out a burial. I still think you should plan that hut trip. In Colorado, that means all-terrain skiing from hut to hut in the mountains.
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If I did that kind of a hut trip I’d need to prepay the funeral services as well as the grave!
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Ha! It can be tough according to Danny. I’m working out so I can go next year!
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Are you serious??? You’re my idol! Notice I did NOT spell that “idle.”
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Been awhile since I commented around here. I don’t believe my parents have thought of cemetery plots and they are only a few years older than you. My mom has always stated she wants to be cremated which is fine but she has never indicated what she wants us to do with her ashes. I honestly have no desire to keep her ashes in an urn and have to stare at them. Will have to discuss with her what the heck she wants us to do with them. I’m not sentimental over urns and ashes and I don’t want to have to deal with a dumb box with ashes in it for the rest of my life!
Buying a cemetery plot is maybe not a pleasant experience but you definitely saved your family a lot of grief. My mom was the executor of my grandparents’ estate and the experience took its toll on her. However they did have the foresight to buy a cemetery plot for the both of them before they both passed away. So when the time finally came, we had all that sorted out and there was no drama.
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Have you considered a mausoleum site? My father was cremated, and my mother has him at a “Mausoleum Park” nearby. It’s very nice. He has a “niche” instead of a plot, and so we have someplace we can visit any time, without keeping Daddy’s urn in the closet. (Which, yes, my mother did for a year after he died until she found this mausoleum park.)
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Those are great for a lot of people!
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I can relate to not knowing what to do with the ashes. In Catholic tradition they must be buried, not scattered or stashed in the closet, so it makes the choice a bit easier.
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Nice to see you again!
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I also love the idea of those biodegradable urns where they integrate the ashes into some compost with a seed and it grows into a tree, not sure exactly how it works but I love the idea of it anyway!
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That is s lovely thought, isn’t it?
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When I go, I wanna be cremated, because I’ll finally have a hot, smoking body…
And I’ll finally be WARM.
After which, anywhere the kids wanna scatter me is fine. The only way I’ll ever see the world.
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this comment… But I hear you. I try not to think about death though; it scares me a bit but the way you have written about it here is somewhat beautiful;like just something else we need to tick off our to-do list. Thanks.
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LOL!!!
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Talk about putting a positive spin on something!
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We did this several years ago. Ours are right down the road from Thomas Jefferson’s. I figure maybe he started another America in heaven and we want in!
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Hey, I never thought of that. Way to plan ahead!
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Hopefully, in that another America he finally worked out the kinks of this one.
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Your kids will thank you. Imagine trying to deal with all that when you’re gone. Now they don’t have to! Thanks, mom and dad! I’m not into any of the death traditions. I don’t want to be buried and I REALLY don’t want an open casket. How morbid. I don’t want folks looking at my corps. Gross. Some traditions need to die.
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Must be the age difference – I find those traditions rather comforting. It helps make it really real, if that makes sense. For those who I haven’t seen in the casket, sometimes it seems their death was a fantasy.
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When my mom was on her deathbed, my brother said, “Hey, ma, are you going to haunt me?” She said, “Not if you don’t want me to.” She was cremated, which surprised me because she was pretty Catlick and I think the church frowns on that sort of thing.
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Nah, they’re good with it. After all, lots of their early martyrs had first-hand experience, what with being burned at the stake and such.
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That’s true. Perhaps mom was playing of tradition. She did like to fancy herself a kind-of B-list martyr.
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So your end-of-life plan is to basically just live forever? 🙂
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I’m gonna live forever. I’m gonna learn how to fly. I’m gonna make it to heaven. Baby, remember my name.
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Fame!
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Rememba… Rememba… Rememba…
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I came out of that movie dancing in the streets! Also cursing that I lived in a small, Midwestern town where the height of my artistic endeavors was gunning for first chair clarinet in the high school band. Bitter, bitter
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I’ve been thinking of this myself. Have to find out if there’s any room in the church cemetery where Pat’s folks are buried. Just haven’t gotten around to do it. We’ll have to talk this weekend about such things. Not fun but you got it done. 🙂
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Someone commented above about not wanted to store their loved ones on their mantel forever, and I thought of you and the world’s most completely furnished, furnished apartment that you rented last year. I still have the pictures I took of your book shelves and plan to write a piece about it one of these days.
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Don’t we all wish we didn’t have to think about this? But having gone through my father-in-law’s funeral, I promise you, you are being a true blessing to your kids. I only wish my FIL, who was a truly kind & loving man in life, would have put a little effort into thinking about his final resting place & what he wanted for services for the sake of his sons.
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My husband left it all to me – said he trusted my judgement. We were at the graveside services for a dear friend’s mom a couple of months later. Her plot is near my in-laws. It was a really hot day and there was no room under the canopy by the graveside, so we stood under a nearby tree. It was cool and shady with a lovely breeze and we could still take part in the prayers, as well as see my in-law’s headstone. I turned to my husband and smiled and said, “This was my choice. We’re standing on our own graves.”
He approved.
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Love your sense of humor about this, Peg. I suppose it has to be done. One less thing to leave for our kids. I’ve told my family to give me one of those green burials where I turn into a tree. Not sure they’re even legal here yet in the U.S., and my family might have to do something different, but what I don’t know won’t hurt me at that point, I guess. 🙂
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Oh how funny Carrie, I just commented about those ones where they turn into trees in response to a comment further up before seeing your comment! Although I was talking about where the ashes are put into a biodegradable urn with the seed and some compost and it grows into a tree – not sure if you’re talking about something different.
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I didn’t know this business where you turn into a tree existed as an option. When my husband’s cousin died they buried his ashes in a little biodegradable bag or something, shallow, in a garden-like setting right next to his church. Part of me thought it was lovely, and the other part was creeped out about walking around on the grass/dirt and probably walking on mud made out of somebody’s Aunt Fanny.
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If it was Aunt Fanny, it would likely be well fertilized!
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The article I read called it a “pod,” and I think the body goes in it. (Sounds gruesome, I know.) I blogged about it once. Just such a cool idea.
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And yet, it also brings “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” to mind…:)
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Well, that could make the afterlife more interesting…
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Here near Atlanta in Conyers, GA there is The Monastery of the Holy Spirit, a Trappist monastery, that has a green burial ground called Honey Creek Woodlands. They accept bodies or cremated remains. I want to be a tree!
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Sounds wonderful. I love the idea of a green burial. Our bodies’ molecules returning to the earth. Has a nice circle-of-life thing about it. 🙂
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I agree – it sounds lovely.
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Well I think you’ve done a good thing Peg, at least it’s done and you don’t need to think about it any more and as others have said, it will make things much easier for your family. Grocery shopping, check! Laundry, check! Cemetry plots bought, check!
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Definitely not a very sexy use of money though, VJ. How boring to be so practical.
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Ah but you’re sexy in every other way, so it’s ok.
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Both my dad and stepmother were cremated. My dad, according to his wishes, was scattered in the Western PA mountains. I gave my stepmother’s ashes to her niece who was going to bury them with Louise’s mother and father far away in Ohio. My mother had a traditional burial in PA 1965 and I have visited her grave once since then. I don’t miss being able to visit them – their memory is vivid in my mind and I know they spirits are soaring in the heavens. I get it that other folks are different and take comfort in visiting departed loved ones. It was just never important to me. Go figure…
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Different strokes, right? My dad is originally from Florida but has lived in Michigan most of his life. He had a condo down there that he inherited and about 5 years ago he and my mom had to sell it – they just couldn’t manage snow-birding anymore because of age and ill health. He’s the last of his family who had a place there. I think one of the toughest things for him was leaving all his relatives down there in the cemetery, with nobody to visit them or care anymore.
Different strokes.
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Awwww…that made me sad. 😦 I can see if that was something that was important to you and you were “carrying” the responsibility, it would be very difficult. My grandparents (whose graves I’ve never visited – both had passed by the time I was born) are in a cemetery that doesn’t have upkeep as part of the deal so my uncle had been paying the yearly fee until he passed 7 or 8 years ago. Since then, my cousin (adopted!) has been paying, but last year we started spreading it out over all the grandkids (8 of us). The “baby” is 62… Once we are all gone, I’m wondering what will happen.
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Personally, I’m going with cremation, because means I could be buried, scattered somewhere, planted as a tree, loaded into a firework and blown up in the night sky, launched into space, pressed into a diamond, and so on. With ashes, the possibilities are endless and not at all mutually exclusive.
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You could be soap! Didn’t the pioneers make soap from ashes, lye and tallow?
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You done good. Like someone else said, it’s better your kids don’t have to deal it after you die. Personally, I’m all for cremation. My dad was in an open casket (his mother insisted) but they neglected to tell me or my mom. To say it was traumatic is an understatement. I get why some people prefer it as a form of closure but uh… no thanks. I find funerals agony to attend. But I love visiting cemetaries. By the way, I am the office manager at an Episcopal Church now and I’ve already had to help with two funerals! I am not from the church so organizing each service order has been very challenging. (I don’t really identify with any specific religion beside maybe Buddhism…)
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Really, Darla? How cool about your new job! I bet you’ll be great at it. You don’t need to be up on dogma, just have a kind heart for all the vulnerable people who often come for help, which you have. Also good to have patience and a thick skin for all the assholes.
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Haha! Yep, ain’t that that truth. I love my job and most of the people are kind and generous. Most. There’s always an asshole in every workplace…
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Your sense of humour on this topic makes it much more palatable for most, Peg, and that has so many talking – well done!
My dad was cremated and asked that his ashes be split in 3 locations with friends and family. My cousin and I had a great giggle when despite all our efforts to the contrary his ashes came back at us in the wind as we tossed them to the waves. It was the same thing that happened to my dad and his sister (my cousin’s mom) when they scattered my Grammma’s ashes. Go figure.
My mom has just asked my brother and I about having a stone in her family plot, which is nowhere near where I live (but near where I am from). Neither my brother nor I have kids so this will be the one place we would be mentioned in stone, so to speak. More for my mom’s sake than mine, I have agreed to a mention so that the family legacy is complete.
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That’s my main fear about scattering ashes. “damn! I got Aunt Myrtle in my eye!”
It’s kind of a nice thought that you’ll be immortalized that way, isn’t it? And it makes your mom happy, so good plan.
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21 year old me is sitting here trying not to think about the future. At this point, if I can make it through the next two weeks of the semester without “shuffling off my mortal coil” then I’ll be happy.
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Very good idea, especially if your semester includes a class on Shakespeare. Hang in there!
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Like everybody else, I think you did the right thing. I should to (but won’t for a while, I’m sure because ewwww). My brother and I had to choose our dad’s casket which was horrible. My brother wanted top of the line — I managed to keep all of us from spending a fortune when my dad was a simple-pine loving man (literally he loved the wood, the smell of the trees …) So that’s next on your list, Peg.
I do loove your sense of humor about this. We’re going through this with my mother in law. John wants to take her out for pizza and then to visit graveyards next weekend. Seems like at a minimum we should eat something healthier first.
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Ha! Pizza and a grave; the new date night for us Boomers. I so agree about the caskets. People feel that somehow spending a ton means you loved them a ton – huge waste. I hope my family goes for the $500 option: a big roll of Saran Wrap.
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Seems a missed opportunity to not just combine real adulty needs with less responsible indulgences and just have put the plot on a tropical island, no? Then you could finally get what’s yours in death if not in life, and the kids could actually enjoy the future visits 😉
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This is scary-brilliant. You may have hit on the marketing scheme of the century – the Destination Funeral!
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I’d invest in that idea. Why choose a burial plot in my hometown that I’ve already visited a thousand times, Mom and Dad? Why not some place a little less gloomy like the Caribbean?
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Isn’t that a fabulous idea?
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Thanks Peg for your humorous insights on what to most people is a topic they prefer to avoid. During a lovely walk with my parents 2 Christmases ago (I’m an expat living far away from them) my Dad suddenly sprung on me “here is where we want our ashes scattered” as we were stopped at what is their favourite spot near where they’ve lived the past 45+ years. Later my Mum said they don’t want me to have to deal with any hassles when they’re gone.. as much as I didn’t love the conversation at the time I do agree it’s a lovely thing by the parents to do for their kids and close family to think things through & make whatever arrangements beforehand.
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I agree. My parents sat us kids down last year and pointed out where all their financial papers and documents were. They hadn’t given any thought to actual funeral stuff – songs at the mass, etc, and it was a bit of a weird conversation, but it’s good stuff to know.
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