Dungeness, Washington
I’m back. Life and travel kept me from posting for a while. The good news is I brought pictures!
Walnut Glen, Booneville, Missouri
Have you ever noticed how many cemeteries have names like: Fairview, Grandview, and Lakeview? Or how about the ones that feature their landscaping like: Walnut Glen, Tall Oaks, Floral Hills?
Floral Hills, Kansas City, Missouri
Are there professional cemetary landscape architects? Must be. Their handiwork is obvious sometimes. At the very least, in most cemeteries somebody planned out the roads.
Mount Olivet, Kearney, Missouri
The cemetery above commands the view from the highest hill in town. It probably used to be gorgeous. Though I wouldn’t call it that anymore, it’s still interesting…vital…colorful?
Happy Homestead, South Lake Tahoe, California
As gorgeous as some of the more manicured cemeteries are, I love the good old-fashioned graveyards best. The ones with narrow, winding roads, or paths, or nothing at all.
Fairview, Kearney, Missouri
Mount Vernon, Atchison, Kansas
Those graveyards tend to have a lot of benches. I always make a point to take a seat. It felt uncomfortable at first, but a bench is an invitation, right? It’s kind of rude to ignore it.
Walnut Glen, Booneville, Missouri
Do you think that people take such care to make cemeteries beautiful for the living or the dead?
Virginia City, Nevada
I Dig Graves! 
Good to see you back! I think it’s for the living, I think it’s all about remembrance
Good to be back. I think you’re right, and having a beautiful, peaceful place to sit and remember is a wonderful thing.
It really is. I love those benches.
I am going to opt for cremation. But if I was going to be buried, I would want it to be a beautiful place so that people would have a reason to come sit near me. So . . . for the living that they might keep the dead company . . . maybe? I don’t know! It’s a very interesting question!
I’m opting for cremation too, but I think, if I can come up with a really terrific headstone, I’ll ask my kids to bury my ashes, mixed up with my husband’s eventually, someplace they’d like to visit. It’s not that I think we’ll be there. It’s just that a really great spot in a nice cemetery can be peaceful and grounding. I’d like for them to be able to experience that kind of place.
Although, I don’t want to guilt anyone to coming to visit. I don’t want to be THAT mother from the grave: “What? Nine months I carry you in my womb and now that I’m dead you can’t even visit?”
I’m with you there, Jean. Better to attract the relatives with honey rather than vinegar, a nice bench, shade tree, some pretty shrubbery, beautiful view…yeah that’ll get ’em there. Of course you have to convince them to do all that planting and bench building after you die.