You’d think after approximately two years of riding mass transit, I’d remember that the bus stops running at 6pm on Sundays, not 6:30. Since the driver offered me a transfer, I thought maybe I still had the chance to get on another bus. Nah.
“Where you getting off at?” asked the driver as we neared the downtown transfer.
” Uh, I was hoping to get on the 202.”
“No, the bus stops at 6, so you going downtown?”
“Yes, I guess I am going downtown,” I said with affected cheer. Now, I could have got off earlier and went to a different grocery store location with more of a walk, but the dread of extra walking made me take my chances with a transfer. Fail. Well, I’m here, I thought. Might as well enjoy myself a little while, then walk 10 blocks up to a Family Dollar and do my shopping there. All downtown were the signs of life being lived: people drinking, eating, and sightseeing. I drowned my sorrows in frozen yogurt, saving the colorful plastic spoon for my collection. Then I began my quest for the 10th Street Family Dollar. Passing by Ye Olde Church, a sight caught my eye. The gate to the oldest cemetery in town stood open. Before now, the gate was always locked. My mother and I always wanted to tour that cemetery, but Mom was a little ‘late’ to this Land of Dead Episcopalians. So it was just me and her ashes around my neck. And this is what I saw:
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Ocdbloggergirl's Blog: OCD, Life, and Other Misunderstandings 
I love cemeteries. That’s sort of morbid of me. But it’s the truth. Back home there’s an old masonic cemetery with a few notable characters spending eternity there.
I kind of like the air conditioned grave site. The thought of being nice & cool in everlasting rest… sounds good to me!
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I wonder if the eye on that one guy’s grave is masonic. That’s what I figured. Thanks!
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Good work! You found a way to expand getting temporarily lost into much deeper meanings. Looking around in cemeteries opens us up to thinking about how we revere and fear death, and follow rituals. I mean, the people aren’t there, just shells from who they used to be. And the stones that remain as short stories, put there by survivors to say “We remember you. We knew you.”
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Indeed, but most of them died in the late 18th century and early 19th century, and sadly their stones are very weathered and many can’t be read. It would be interesting to know how each one died, were they nice folks, what’s left of their bodies by now,, is anything left that they were buried with.
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And so, as the saying goes, “All things (material) must pass.” We will be a part of that process in a blink of the eye of history. Who, someday in the future, will look at the weathered evidence that we once lived? It’s a very emotionally evocative piece, Lisa.
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Thank you very much, Mikey!!!!!!!!
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When my children were little we were poor and gas was cheap so we’d take country drives. We often stopped at country cemeteries we came upon. You can learn a lot history by reading headstones. The epidemics are obvious. Unique headstones make it fun.
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Hi, Leanne, I totally agree. It’s great fun, odd as it may seem to some.
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That was hilarious Lisa. Best cemetery tour ever.
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🙂
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Spooky!
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I know, right? 😀
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