What do you want on your tombstone...?

"One second, I'll be right with you."

On a serious note, I've always like R. L. Stevenson's: Under the wide and starry sky Dig the grave and let me lie Gladly I lived and gladly I die And I lay me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me Here he lies where he longed to be Home is the sailor home from the sea And the hunter home from the hill.

There may be more, but I don't remember it. The grave as "home" is an odd concept, to me, and I've often thought about it.

It is odd, though I suppose we'll spend more time there than anywhere else, or at least what's left of us will.

In years past when my siblings and I would walk through older parts of that cemetery after visiting our mother's grave, we noticed several humorous tombstones as well. I remember seeing a large one with the name "Munster"on it, and my childish mind thought that's where Herman and Lily were buried! And I'm thinking we saw a newer tombstone from some time in the 20th century that showed a golfer teeing off on it.

We also noticed that the type of minerals commonly used for tombstones back then were too soft to hold up to the test of time and were quite worn as is shown in your pictures. My parents' stone, however, looked just as pristine in your photos as the day it was sunk into the ground in 1971.

Did you get into that area to the left behind the pond that had several of those huge mausoleums?

We didn't. I didn't even see a pond (it's such a huge cemetery!). We may very well go back sometime though.

Our favorite name was "Barnabas Bump." He sounds like a Dickens character, doesn't he?

Pepperoni and sausage . . . . .oops, wrong kind of tombstone.