Grave

This week I took a day off work and went down to see the newly installed stone on my mother's grave. In case you can't quite see the bottom line, it reads "...so Carrie won't be alone..."

Carrie was her step-grandmother and was sort of the black sheep of the family, which is hard to accomplish. You can trust me on that one. You might know that my mother wrote a book about her family, which we published posthumously on Lulu.com. By 'we', I mean my brother-in-law, who did all the work, and my father, who paid for it. I definitely had thoughts, though! Lots and lots of thoughts.

While doing research for her book, she discovered that Carrie was actually not so bad; she was just a socialist and a crusader for unpopular causes. As we know, this can make one a pariah in short order, and so my mother, a bit of a quiet crusader herself, decided to remedy this injustice. She cared not at all what sort of service we had for her, but was very adamant that she be buried with Carrie, "So Carrie won't be alone." And so it was done. If you like, you can read a bit more about Carrie and the epitaph in this post on Doraville.

As it turns out, they both have plenty of neighbors, including the one that cast the annoying shadow on Carrie's stone so you can't see it very well in the picture. Below is the view of the Green Mountain Cemetery in Rainier, Oregon, from their grave. While looking it up to make sure I had the name right, I found this link to the International Ghost Hunters Society about a ghost investigation at Green Mountain. Maybe Carrie is out and about at night, doing her part for Occupy Wall Street! That would be AWESOME; I would totally go if there were ghosts there. Well, maybe not. I'm pretty lazy, plus my day job cuts into my protesting time.

And this is the skyward view from the grave. It's quite stunning on a nice fall day, though I don't guess they're looking. If they're doing anything, it's probably MUCH more productive than lounging around staring at the sky. I wonder if they take requests? I didn't think to give them any while I was there but I will definitely rectify that next time. Until then, enjoy the view, ladies!