graveyards

I've always had a fascination with graveyards. I blame my great-grandmother. For fun, she used to make us go to flea markets and graveyards. Every time we visited her out in the wilds of Acme, PA, we always had to make a trip to several graveyards to visit the dead relatives. (She also let us burn stuff!) We always visited with a whole group of family so we could run & play in the graveyards. I don't get creeped out by cemeteries or gravestones.

I spent much of the summer of 1987 in hanging out in graveyards in Philly & Bucks County. I tried to take a grave rubbing course through the community college, but my mother was horrified. She would be more upset to know that I almost lost my virginity in a graveyard. I was told it was the place where Nancy Spungen was supposedly 'resting'. (I don't know if that was supposed to win me over.) Besides, it took a lot longer to talk me into the deed. In seven years, he & I never consummated the whole cemetery thing. I'm a little disappointed. In Lancaster, I completed part of my student teaching requirements in an elementary school next to a graveyard which everyone else thought was strange.

I never understood the big deal until a friend was carjacked, raped, & murdered. It changed how I thought about cemeteries. Visiting her was uncomfortable. Several of us actually snuck in and visited her gravesite on the night of the fourth of July after she was murdered. I remember that we set off fireworks and had our own little ceremony.

There aren't any good cemeteries in San Diego. The city is too new. I miss looking at old gravestones & the history involved. Personally, I'm getting cremated.