A Take of Two Graveyards, Part Two

For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #99: Cemeteries, I took photos at two very different places: the St. Michael's Memorial Garden and East Lawn Palms where my mom is buried. This is the second of the two entries.



My mom didn't really believe in getting cremated, having been raised with old-fashioned Roman Catholic attitudes. I made arrangements for this cemetery and this marker just weeks before she died. I designed the marker from a couple of standard options (stone color, scroll, comedy/tragedy masks and roses) and added a quote from a song my mom wrote in the early 1970s.



Keeping the grass green is an ongoing issue. I've complained but it doesn't help.


The Garden of Love.



The high-rent district, where standing markers are allowed. In my mom's section, all markers must be flat so a law mower can ride over them. Even flowers must be on stands that bend flat.


Some of these high-end markers are rather elaborate...


...and this one is especially striking.



Carly also wanted to see a black and white version of one shot. Here it is!

Karen

EMPS: A Tale of Two Graveyards, Part One

For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #99: Cemeteries, I took photos at two very different places: the St. Michael's Memorial Garden and at East Lawn Palms where my mom is buried. I will devote an entry to each.

From Arizona Cemeteries

This is the NE memorial garden at St. Michael and All Angels. It is the larger of the two sections.



My 104-year-old friend Eva Osburn was one of the people most recently interred here.


Customized remembrances at this cremation-only graveyard are small-scale but heartfelt. A hummingbird ornament adorns the grave on the left, while the flags of England the the United Kingdom mark the ashes of a parishioner who was born in England.


Some of the "All Angels", perhaps?



Here is a black and white version of one photo, by request.

I recently carried a crucifix at a funeral at St. Michael's. I didn't have ready access to my camera that morning, but there was a 21-gun salute for the retired Marine, something I'd never seen before in person. Taps was played, and also a hymn on bagpipes. The folding of a flag for the widow was done very slowly and deliberately, and the saluting was also done very slowly.

This is where I intend to be interred. I haven't made the arrangements, though.

Now on to East Lawn Palms!


Karen

EMPS: Scenes From Memorial Day 2009

For Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #39: Memorial Day, my first thought was simply to visit my mom's cemetery, something I hadn't done in ages. I did go there eventually, but first I made a few other stops.

From Memorial Day in Tucson, 2009

Let's start here, at the corner of 22nd St. and Kolb Rd. in Tucson, AZ. Carly asked for a picture of a flag, preferably with a frame around it. This shot I framed and then added a stars cutout effect.

Now this is a huge, huge flag, probably one of the biggest in all of Tucson. It amuses me greatly that this display of ostentatious patriotism is at a Toyota dealership. I guess in this case, love of country does not equate with the sentiment, "Buy American!" Then again, there's probably at least one Toyota factory in the U.S. these days. But isn't all this kind of emblematic of this country? It's big and brash, heterogeneous and inconsistent, but all the better for trying to be too many things at once.

I was actually at 22nd and Kolb to buy a couple cheap McDonald's cheeseburgers for myself and the dogs. The flag was a happy accident, although in truth there are a lot of car dealerships in town that display large flags.

Anyway, from there I headed south on Kolb to the Boneyard. This is the nickname of the local aircraft graveyard, formally called the Aerospace Maintenance And Regeneration Center, or AMARC. I've photographed bits of the Boneyard a number of times before, but it's a huge place that goes on for miles and miles, and rewards repeat visits.

I have strongly mixed feelings about AMARC and the husks of old warplanes to be seen there, hundreds and hundreds of them. I certainly approve of the recycling aspect of it, to the extent that sometimes one of these planes or helicopters gets pulled out of mothballs and returned to the air, or is dismantled for parts, or broken up for scrap. And I do realize that the military needs planes to do all sorts of things, transport and reconnaissance and rescue and such. On the other hand....

For a while, years ago, hundreds of recently-retired B-52 bombers lined the road, each one essentially a killing machine, mostly used in Vietnam. I'm not going to argue the merits of wars in general or that war in particular. It just makes me sad, that's all, to think of all the people killed, on all sides of every war. I'm not deriding the morality or bravery of anyone; I just wish nobody had to die over religious, political, territorial or economic conflicts, anywhere in the world. One thing I especially admire about today's military is a nation-building aspect of what they try to do. Unfortunately, even that can be a terminal occupation.

Near AMARC is the Pima Air & Space Museum, which features a whole barracks building devoted to a particular WW II squadron. I've been through the museum's indoor and outdoor exhibits three or four times over the years, but mostly I end up swinging by when they're already closed for the day. Years ago, it used to be possible to pull into the parking lot and take pictures through fences of some interesting aircraft on the museum's periphery. But now it's fenced off when the place closes at 5 PM. Still, I wanted to make another attempt at a good picture of the "Beauty of Flight" monument at the parking lot entrance.

You may be relieved to learn that I didn't take a single photo at Reid Park today. Neither the dogs nor I felt like hanging out there for long, although we did go briefly.

From there we headed north and east to East Lawn Palms cemetery, where my mom is buried. The dogs, of course, had no clue what the place was, but they knew it wasn't a dog playground, and behaved tolerably well. The entrance drive was lined with flags, as I knew it would be. I was there on another Memorial Day years ago, and took pictures then too. The difference is that on that occasion I was there earlier in the day, and an employee gave me a free flag for my mom's grave as I drove past.

My mom was not a veteran, but her mother was. My dad is a World War II vet, but he's alive and well, thank you. I did make a courtesy visit to my mom's grave, and momentarily felt like crying when I realized I was singing a song my mom wrote, which I quoted from on her grave marker. But mostly I was looking at Memorial Day remembrances: flags, red white and blue flowers and so on.

I have a bunch more photos of the Boneyard and the cemetery, and things to say about some photos that I won't be posting in this blog entry. Let's not overload this blog with image files, for once. If you click on any picture above, it will take you to a Picasa album of the day's shoot, with captions on a number of the photos. I especially like the one of two graves marked by flags and a teddy bear.

And now, having been at work on the photo editing and this blog entry for nearly 6 hours straight, I'm going to post this and go to bed. Catch you later!

Karen

A Damp,Thoroughly Modern Cemetery

Your Monday Photo Shoot: Take a picture of, or in, a cemetery. Your local cemetery is good, but if you've been to, say, Paris, to see Jim Morrison's grave, or took some arty shots of an ornate headstone elsewhere, something like that works, too.

I've actually taken and posted lots of cemetery photos in past entries years ago, mostly in October 2004 when I was on a pre-Halloween death kick, but also in a few 2005 entries, all in my old AOL journal. You can find the links to some of them below. I recommend the two Tombstone/Boot Hill entries; I posted a number of fun shots of that historic and picturesque (not to mention picaresque) cemetery.

Grave Matters (with lots of Boot Hill photos)

More on Tombstone and Tombstones

Memorial Day, Then and Now

East Lawn Palms. My mom's grave is in the foreground somewhere.

Even so, I do have new photos for you tonight. I hadn't visited my mom's grave since Mother's Day (for about two minutes), so I headed over there at lunchtime. I don't go there much anymore, because I don't believe for a moment that a cemetery is a better place to think of my mom, honor her or talk to her than here at my computer, or at the grocery store, or any of the other places that remind me of her. But I've already ranted that rant at least once, so let's move on.

Like other modern cemeteries in Tucson, East Lawn Palms is designed largely for ease of maintenance. Only a few small, expensive sections allow statues, or upright markers instead of flat ones flush with the ground. Other than temporary displays for major holidays and such, the only flowers allowed are plastic ones, mounted in metal vases that fold down to accommodate a lawn mower rolling over them. The grass is thick, hardy and not especially pretty. There aren't a lot of options if you want a carpet of grass to grow in the desert; even the local ballparks have difficulty with this. But my mom's grave in particular was a bare, muddy mess for the first year and a half, and I had to keep complaining until they realigned the dirt around the marker to prevent pooling, and replanted grass until it finally took hold. Actually, I've ranted that rant, too.

Standing water, about four inches deep, but only in one spot

It rained overnight and this morning (Tuffy nervously alerted me to this fact at 6:30 AM by jumping on the bed and standing on my hair), so I was curious to see whether there would be any flooding at East Lawn. There was, but not on the lawn, only in one or two places on the network of looping drives.


As I drove to the back of the property, seeking a good shot with the mountains and maybe some statuary, I found this new stretch of lawn (left). I'm pretty sure that wasn't there the last time I explored the place. Beyond that wall on the left is an older cemetery, which doesn't seem to be part of East Lawn at all.

The presence of a canopy and a couple of blue-shirted guys means there was a funeral in this section today. There's also some kind of little green tractor-thing, probably preparing the ground.

There was also a big yellow bulldozer. I suppose that means they don't employ gravediggers anymore, at least not guys with shovels.

I feel the need to reprint a poem I wrote a few years back. Here it is.

Visiting the Stone

It rained last week, but the grass is dry,
Faded, almost white, waiting
For another season, or
Better, artificial rain.
It's thick and sharp, hardy,
Ugly grass, meant largely
To keep the dirt in place.

The stone is dry and clean.
No mud, no blown dirt,
Hardly any leaves of grass cover
Name or dates, notes or masks,
Scroll or colorless rose, or
The nine engraved words, sung
So many years ago.
I sing them again, softly,
As she did before she died.

I don't talk to her, except
For an embarrassed "Hi, Mom."
I pause, and get
The long-handled-brush
From the back of the car.
I brush away the few stray leaves,
And then I drive away.

KFB, 1/26/05

"So don't be sad; there's nothing more to say."--RAJ, circa 1970

"Why does everything you write have to be so gloomy?" - Mom, circa 1974.

Karen


My mom's Find A Grave page