Cemeteries

I love cemeteries. They're always quiet places. But unlike, say, a hilltop in the country, you feel surrounded with people. The names. The dates. You wonder, "What was this person's life like?"

And you mentally reassure them that someone is paying attention to them, someone is noticing their name, even if it's a stranger.

If I could somehow manage it, I'd put a short video into my headstone. Someone could come over and press "play" and there I'd be, telling them about my life. Telling them to have another drink on me (poured on me, that is) because regrettably, I can no longer drink. Maybe telling a couple of lawyer jokes. Telling them to come back the next day to have a picnic on my grave. To take pictures and post them on their blog. Wouldn't that be cool? I'd die really happy knowing that were the case. Sure beats twenty virgins.

My father and my brother are ashes now, but somehow I want to bring part of their ashes to Notre-dâme-des-Neiges cemetery and give them their own little plots, because they spent so much time here. Then I could go picnic and pour a little wine on their soil in the summer and maybe play some guitar. "Yo, Chris, Dad, this one's for me."

Me? I don't want to be ashes. I want to be whole, so the bugs have something to eat, so my remains give plants a chance to grow, so my atoms spread through the soil and enrich it and eventually end up in the pollen of a dandelion that flies miles away in the wind. Imagine my atoms flying to West Island!

Here's a photo of the cemetery that's across the street from my house, actually taken with a film SLR. That's where I want to go when I go. Click to enlarge.