Cemeteries

When I was growing up in Sackville, N.B., we lived not far from the town cemetery.  I hardly ever went into it.  There's someone buried there with the name Hiawatha Dixon.  I also noticed a small marker saying "Sailor."

Here in Toronto, I've visited the Mt. Pleasant Cemetery several times.  If you keep your eyes open you can notice some interesting things there:  in one corner I saw the small headstone of CBC journalist Norman DePoe.  I read somewhere that there's an eccentric buried there whose only stone is an unmarked boulder!

In Palermo, Sicily, they have a monastery full of mummies from the 17th through 19th centuries.  What's really creepy about it is that you can tell when they lived because they're still wearing the same clothes!

In India the Parsee sect, who go back to Iranian followers of Zoroaster, have high towers where they put out their dead for the vultures to eat. (They do that in Tibet too.) I must admit that's eco-friendly!

In China some people have a "tree burial" where they cremate you and plant a tree over your ashes.  I think that's what I'd like done with my body. (I like the idea of having a living memorial.) I have nothing against worms, except that they work slowly, while fire can reduce you all at once.  And I don't like the idea of taking up ground that posterity has to treat with sanctity!