Skip to main content

A Trip to the Crematorium

I love me a cemetery.  It was, in fact, the location of my very first date (an ominous beginning to a dating life).  I was 16.  We had a picnic on Daisy Mae Ordway's grave, and I was much too nervous at the time to remember anything about the conversation had.  My friends and I spent a lot of time near Daisy Mae Ordway that Summer.  This was Oakdale, CA, a 20-minute drive from my then-hometown of Waterford.  All of my then friends lived in Oakdale, so I stayed there as often as possible.  There was a good bit of sneaking out in the middle of the night to visit the cemetery down the road (this was the height of my short-lived rebellious period, so I think we might have shared a plastic cup of Pink Chablis--pronouned Chabliss by us ignoramuses--on the way) .  We were only spooked once, and that was when the sprinklers suddenly turned on one night.  Otherwise, I've always found cemeteries to be very good places to sit and meditate on life, death and all the many many things in between.

We don't really have cemeteries here in San Francisco.  There are a couple up in the Presidio (including a pet cemetery), but the rest were scooped up for land use back in the early 1900s.  The bodies were moved down to Daly City and beyond.  Enter the Neptune Society's Columbarium.

(this shot is a little off-center, which is how I felt after I left)


I visited the Columbarium this past weekend.  It is one weirdly quirky final resting place.  The genius of this place is that anyone of any faith (or no faith at all) is welcome.  And you can design the display of your remains like a diorama.  Or go minimalist and just display an urn.  Or have you and your partner placed inside matching Elvis cookie jars.  Most of The original "residents" went more the plaque-of-bronze style with only a family name to decorate their eternal real estate.  But nowadays, you get an empty glass case to design as you wish.

Available: your niche in history

There was some serious flair going on in some cases.  Many gorgeous, spare ones as well.  I found myself most drawn to those that had photos displayed in them, so I could grasp a little of the story of that person's life.  Several were all decked out, complete with birth dates and just the ominous phrase "not yet" for death date.  You have to appreciate the humor in that.  I was also really drawn to the cases where partners were memorialized together.   It was also really sweet that visitors were evident all around, not because there was anyone else there, but because they'd left behind cards, trinkets, little bottles of vodka left on the floor outside the case.  One card read "I miss you ignoring me."  That's dark.  



What was supremely creepy about the place was the piped in music.  It played on a continual loop, so these ragtime favorites repeated after every 6th or 7th song, and it takes a while to see the whole place, so I think I heard the album 3 times before leaving.  If you'd like to experience this creepiness for yourself, please press play:    


The place was delightfully strange.  I don't really want to be housed there, but I did like the idea of designing a diorama of my life for others to see after I'm gone.  What would I put in it?  A pen probably, maybe a small painting.  Favorite photos of me with favorite people.  Perhaps a mini Sutro Tower :)  I also had the completely embarrassing realization that I'm becoming one of those ridiculous people who will find a way to be buried with their cats (there were a lot of animals inside people's boxes, in photo or ash form).  A mortality moment I've been able to avoid until this visit.  There is something about the Columbarium that makes your personal form of strange seem more acceptable though.  How San Franciscan of it.      
    

Comments

  1. we were in san fran last week. needless to say this was not on the tour we chose to take the kids on.

    i recall hearing once that 'it isn't the date of your birth or the date of your death that is significant, it is the "-" in between.' i hope my "-" tells a good story.

    elvis cookie jars?? i have a grandmother who would so go for that.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

My Litquake 2012 Report

I've been avoiding putting this together, because a part of me really doesn't want this year's Litquake festival to be over already.  The other part of me is still cranky-tired, wandering around trying to get to all those projects I said I'd get to after Litquake, and feeling post-Christmas like. In short, this year's Litquake was AMAZING.  Every year has been awesome, but this one was particularly special for me because I got to actually help plan the awesome.  As a volunteer during the festival for the past several years, I definitely felt like I contributed to making each event I helped at awesome, but this year, being on the committee,* I got to witness the tremendous build up to the festival that happens the whole year prior.  The amount of love, sweat and time that goes into it is incredible, and I'm not sure I've ever been part of something so cool.  Which is not to say I'm not still cranky-tired and looking forward to feeling fully recovered.

Love These Days

What love looks like these days in my tiny corner of the world. Or, what I'm loving these days. Books: These have brought me so much delight and escape and hope lately: Housebreaking , by Colleen Hubbard The Swimmers , by Julie Otsuka A Life in Light; meditations on impermanence, by Mary Pipher Rules for Visiting , by Jessica Francis Kane This Time Tomorrow, by Emma Straub Unsheltered, by Barbara Kingsolver Hunt, Gather, Parent , by Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD Podcasts (the links will take you to specific episodes that moved me): Crazy Good Turns HerMoney with Jean Chatzky The Lazy Genius Podcast Mega Moms Don't Have Time to Grieve Unpublished We Can Do Hard Things On Being Death, Sex and Money I was going to add another category here and then I realized all I've been consuming lately are books and podcasts. :) I love a book or podcast recommendation! What have you read or heard lately that has made your heart sing, your world grow, or brought you solace?

What To Expect When You Are Expecting A Pandemic

“When I think about all that has to transpire to get from pregnancy to the birth, I am overwhelmed by time and the unknown. It’s not useful to contemplate. There is only today, and it is good.” I documented my move from ambivalence about parenting, to IVF, to motherhood, as well as all of Year One. I did it longhand because that’s what I did back then. So now, finally, I’m typing all those pages up, in part because of the great What If that living amid a pandemic creates. And I came across this yesterday and it is so true for the current moment, for this, the fifth week of Sheltering in Place. Ways this time is like pregnancy: It can make you fat. It will definitely make you crave near-constant meals and snacks. You will swing from feeling good to anxiety-laden, angry, irritable and back again several times a day. You will want to know how this will all unfold, how hard it will get, exactly how you and your life will be changed. You can’t know any of that. Ther