THE BOOK OF DEBORAH AREN'T WE SPECIAL

I enjoy walking through cemeteries. So my purge is an argument that has me torn between the pros and cons of their actual usefulness.

Reading tombstones can be interesting. We all know some of the history of names. Millers were people who worked in mills. Schumacher’s were probably shoemakers. The Stones worked with stone or lived in caves maybe.

Smiths worked with metal. Depending on the type there are the Silversmiths, Tinsmiths and of course the sooty Blacksmiths. We know what the Goode’s had. How about the Barrens, a nonproductive lot. I wouldn’t mind being one of the Wrights. Hard to argue with them.

I love the name Gaylord, and can someone help me with

Guckenberger? So, these are some of the silly things I think of while wandering the Cemetery. The best Pro about a cemetery is the peace and quiet. The fact that the only people there besides me are usually dead.

Now the Con’s. How special we think we are that we entomb our remains in stone and wood or metal containers. Our tiny corpses leached by men then injected with preserving chemicals. For what? Not like there’s anything salvageable for the grave robbers of the future.

Let’s not forget the monuments marking the spot to our not so meaningful lives. We chop down the trees and clear the ground for useless grass. Stealing the territory from the natives. Taking up space for the living. The kin of the dead make contributions of plastic flowers and miniature flags, and no trespass signs that after a couple of years become as faded and forgotten as the memories.

Can you imagine the bacteria, worms, and other lifeforms that have the responsibility of cleaning up and recycling our remains? They meet at the body buffet table wondering what all the goo- stuffed chemical matter is in this body’s chest or how tasteless and inedible the plastic and metal bones are.

I know it’s been a tradition for millennia that we consecrate and perform rituals of burial for the dead. It’s sometimes obscenely elaborate and other times barely attended. I want to know when we became so important that we cannot return the little that we are. Why do we keep on taking even after death? I would like to give a shout out to the person who said...

“The best way to keep a memory alive is to speak the name.”