It’s worse than that; he’s dead, Jim

I love my mother, but sometimes she strikes me as somewhat, ermm, weird. Actually, that’s not even the best term for it. She lives in the South, and despite the stereotypes about the conformity expected in southern culture, there is a strong tradition of the eccentric that runs among those that occupy Dixie, and she is rapidly filling a key niche as the eccentric cemetary lady in her town.

Mom just went to Boston for a gravestone conference. She is a nationally recognized expert in the analysis of graves, and really enjoys all aspects of the messages to the dead left by the living. She picks apart sympols on gravestones, and assigns them acronyms that she and my sister have given to various motifs, such as GA (Gates Ajar) and LC2C (Lady Clinging 2 Cross). When she got home I got an interesting call.

“Nathan, guess what!! (breathless excitement)
“What is it mom?”
“I have just found the most wonderful stone, and I definitely want my gravestone made out of it. Slate! It’s great! I just visited all these neat graves from the seventeenth and eighteenth century, and they are still so nicely legible!”
“Mom, do you realize how most people would react to getting this announcement from their mother?”

Heh. I dig on the stuff too; I’ve blogged roadside memorials (the next day, she emailed me a better site than the one I blogged.) and I think there is definitely a lot that is revealed about the living by how we treat our dead. With that in mind, I must share with you a custom coffin catalog, which features graphics on the coffins to go out with. Mom’s favorite is the “Return to Sender” post office model. I personally am fond of the NASCAR checkered flag version. Although the Hunting one is funny too.

For those of you wondering how you would find graves that were buried in forests as part of the new eco-death movement, technology has the answer. And here’s the gravestone horror story of the day: their gravestone arrived on Tuesday. He went up with his chainsaw to clear a space for it, and died of an apparent heart attack. When she found out about his death, she collapsed and died of a heart attack too.

Please also check out Cold Marble Musings, the outstanding grave blog.

Another Pie in the Face

Marc Boris St.-Maurice, who was jailed on charges he hit a Mounty with a pie, was cleared of the charges after videotape revealed his target: himself. You see, Mr. St.-Maurice was attempting to pie a statue of Emily Murphy, a noted Canadian feminist and anti-cannabis activist who helped usher in pot prohibition in Canada. When it became obvious the authorities were going to stop him, he pied himself.

"The only honourable thing to do at that point was disarm the pie on myself, which I did."

Indeed.