Plucky Letters to US soldiers in Iraq

Monday, July 21, 2003

Dear Rob,

Yesterday Rudy and I took your truck out on a country drive, just to keep it in good shape. We drove it all over the county visiting little cemeteries. That’s our hobby- we like to visit out-of-the-way cemeteries and look at all the gravestones. It’s really interesting because you have to try to guess at why people died, what their lives were like, and what their relationships were. For example, yesterday in the Merna Cemetery we saw three identical headstones lined up together. Two women and a man, with the names and dates as such:

Illia Mae Giles
1893-1949

Minnie Mae Giles
1893-1955

John Matthew Giles
1893-1957

So you really have to wonder what is their story?? Were they triplets? Did none of them ever marry? It stretches the imagination to think John Matthew Giles had one wife with the middle name Mae die on him and then married another with the same middle name! Rudy and I find these things intriguing, but our favorites are the newer headstones. You would not believe the bizarre things people are doing with their eternal resting places these days.

Many Central Illinois farmers, for example, have their John Deere tractors emblazoned on their grave markers. Some have a bird’s eye view of their entire farms etched into the stone. Yesterday we saw one progressive grave marker depicting a blonde couple, both wearing Levi’s blue jeans, standing together on a beam of light being ushered into a small chapel in a wooded prairie scene. What was remarkable about this is that it was somehow done in color.

Last summer we discovered a couple in LeRoy Cemetery who had their small tract house, similar to Grandma & Papa’s home, depicted on their stone. I guess they are making the statement:
Look, this is where we lived, and it was good.

The worst ever is also in LeRoy. A couple in their mid-sixties has their most recent anniversary photo etched into the stone by an unskilled monument worker. It is hideous beyond belief. If I were among this couple’s progeny, I would have the thing removed and install a more tasteful headstone posthaste.

Vehicles are particularly popular. We’ve seen everything from Harley-Davidson motorcycles to VW Bugs memorialized in marble. Yesterday I saw a Chrysler PT Cruiser on the headstone of a 37 year old dead man. There are also a wide variety of shapes going into the grave stone concept these past five years or so. There is one in Funks Grove in the shape of a large book, complete with binding and a pages effect on top and right side.

The late-20th Century graves of young people are most interesting. Seems the parents of children and teens who tragically die are not content with the time-honored granite lambs and cherubs of old. They want something more relevant.

Hence, the grave in the Lexington cemetery of a 4 year old boy. The poor little dead kid has the Blues Clues dog forever carved into the center of his eternal marker. “This is my worldly resume,” says this kid to future generations, “I liked to watch Blues Clues on TV.”

Parents are also shameless in their capacity to eternally humiliate their dead teenage boys. Countless 16 year old car accident victims are memorialized with sappy and pathetic poetry writ large on the backs of their tombstones. Here’s an example from Lexington Cemetery.
Front of stone:
Shane Smith
1985-2001
(lots of decorations)
Back of stone:
"You are my son Shane,
My only son, Shane
You make me happy
When skies are grey
You'll never know, Shane
How much I love you
Please don't take my son Shane away."

Obviously a private little song mommy sang to Shane when he was little, and it certainly did make the tears well up in my eyes when I read it.

But do we really think 16 year old Shane would have wanted mom to broadcast it to all the world, for eternity?

Personally, I think Shane would die all over again from embarrassment every single time a girl from his school visits his grave. There is a bench graveside, so I’m sure lots of people visit young Shane. (The bench is chained down, which brings a whole other graveyard issue to mind, but I'll let that go for now.)

Having this sort of hobby makes one stop and think about how these things happen. I think it’s because people in a state of grief are not very good at thinking long-term. They’re thinking that somehow whatever they put on the grave marker is for the dead person, rather than for those who come along later.

It also makes me think about what I want my gravestone to look like. Nothing too fancy, but personalized for sure. No pre-fabricated religious symbols. I happen to believe that quite a few of the folks resting in peace under etched symbols of crosses and praying hands probably were no more religious than the rest of us, but their surviving family members just picked something out of a Monument Catalog of some sort. Many, many of the gravestones we’ve seen are clearly catalog ordered. Check out how often you see the joined wedding rings with “Together Forever” carved below. Yuck! What gravestones need, in my opinion, is more geneological information and less pre-fabricated crap.

I’ll try to make it a point to buy my headstone before I am "called away.”

That’s another thing I frequently see carved on people’s headstones- something about how they are not really dead, they’re just “away.” What the hell kind of bullshit is THAT? Does it mean you can leave a voicemail and expect they will call you back when they “return?” I hate those “he is but away…” carvings on people’s headstones. As if nobody wants to admit they’re dead. What is that? Some sort of way of dealing with it that allows you to pretend that Grandpa is just taking a little trip to the other side, but he’ll be in the office next Thursday? (He is “but away…”)

No, I think dead people are most likely gone for good; that’s the way it works around here as far as I can tell.
Maybe I'll have my gravestone say:
"I'm dead.
How are you?"

Just kidding. Sort of.

Much Love,
--Mom