Life Equals Love Equals Death
One difference I just noticed between Oklahoma and Massachusetts is that there are a lot more cemeteries here! Which only means New England has the tendency to memorialize their dead a bit more responsibly. I'll tell you a little story.
I grew up on 17 acres in a hollow in northeast Oklahoma; it was a really pretty place until the turnpike came through. I was always told there was an old family cemetery in the field out front, and you could easily find some sunken spots in the ground where it was said to be.
One day when I was like 10, I was digging in this old pile of brush and old tree stumps and found a the top half of a tombstone that was broken off at the base. The name on the tombstone was Susan L. Ross, and she was born in 1793 and died in 1845, so there's a very good chance she ended up in Oklahoma via the Trail of Tears. None of my family who lived there knew who she was.
There were several more indentations in the dirt near spot where the cemetery was supposed to be, but I never found any corresponding tombstones. I need to figure out who they are someday.
161 years after she died I am thinking about Susan L. Ross because I found her tombstone in a pile of brush when I was a boy.
25 Comments:
Apparently that asteroid is comin' in 2029? ready to die?
Hey Jeff...I remember that tombstone story. Danny and I once went digging around your house before, too.
Interesting. So, George's fiancee on Seinfeld was buried in the past in Oklahoma after being killed by cheap envelope glue? I'll bet that crazy Kramer had something to do with that!
Ice Age first actually Earth is near for the next ice age again, it already been 5,000 years since the last one.
Has you thought about checking the record office if you lads have them in America?
I once dug up a grave in Iraq while digging a fighting position. This person had no tombstone, and I'm told was probably one of many nameless victems of Sadam's attemp to "clense" the Kurds from Northern Iraq. I wonder about them too, from time to time.
Hmm... I would rather just be remembered through my works, family, and friends. I am not so vain as to suggest that a 4 by 7 foot piece of land needs to be forever reserved for my carcass.
Yep. Donate my body to science.
You gon' get oozed.
Also, are you absolutely sure turning on comments again was a wise idea? Things seem civil enough now, but... ugh.
I personally have always wanted a viking funeral.
Imagine what the next peoples of earth will think, when they begin to rebuild civilizations on earth and find arlington cemetary. If they don't go down another 6 feet, they will probably think that it is a landing pad for space ships, like the egyptian pyramids. then they will try to decypher our language from the last names on the headstones. "smith" will probably mean "of", and "jones" will mean "the". This is of course assuming that we destoy ourselves pretty soon.
Also, there is a cemetary in North Andover where one of the grave stones says that the person "melted" to death. It is really old, like from the 17 or 18 hundreds.
when i die, i want my body to be suspended from a crane, high above times square in new york city and then dynamited.
My cousin passed away about a year ago, he was a keen amateur yachtsman, even built his own outrigger. His father wanted to give him a viking funeral, in Sydney harbour, but "The Man" wouldn't let him do it.
I think they should let you do whatever you want with your withered old husk when you're done with it as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. I want my remains to be ground up in with McDonald's hamburger meat.
"I want my remains to be ground up in with McDonald's hamburger meat."
I'd hit that
The one time I drove the backroads of Oklahoma, sometimes the only signs of civilization were the signposts for graveyards every couple of miles.
Every time I passed one, I wondered how they even managed to fill one.
I admire the apparent serenity with which you discovered that your front yard was really and truely fulled up with dead people. Good fo' you.
Way to make me depressed, Captain Bringdown!
Well I think that is awesome. And the comic is great, too.
Speaking of eerie stuff, what became of your quest for a Realdoll? and... why?
(i'm assuming you've seen today's qc)
I'm glad to see that If Lucy Fell isn't forgotten.
It's symbolic.
One of my obsessions is overcoming entropy, and leaving a reminder of yourself that still evokes a "?" after 161 years is a good way. Jeff, data you created will be around as long as humans use computers. Probably 100 years from now your work will be rediscovered and someone will write a book about you. Or one page will survive and they will wonder if the rest was as funny.
Yesterday, I found a lightning bug on my bathroom floor. The house was all dark and so I just sat on the floor and watched it. It was obviously about to die, pulsing just ever so slightly every minute or so and then less frequently until it stopped altogether. I watched a lightning bug die, Jeffrey Rowland. Then I took it outside and put it in the grass. That is what your story about Susan L. Ross reminded me of. Her life is meaningful to me because you have proof that she existed. My lightning bug, like Susan, is meaningful because it existed. It was one of the things out of all the infininte possibilities that existed! It lived and blinked a few times in this vast but limited universe, and that means something, even if it did die on the cold dark tile of my bathroom floor. I thought that might mean something to you or someone. I hope.
my dog once found a human femur bone in the bush out by my family cabin, I was kind of freaked out because there weren't any wars or anything in the area. Upon closer inspection, I found out that it was just a funny shaped stick with no bark. I lead the most exciting of lives.
Karen, that was truly beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing that.
Yeah no doubt, nice Karen. Sometimes when I kill an insect I just feel the most ridiculous amount of remorse and it's nice to know it's at least somewhat universal.
i killed a spider yesterday. afterwards, i thought to myself why the hell didn't i just trick it onto a piece of paper and let it go outside. maybe in the future some good will occur that wouldn't have if i hadn't killed the spider. hopefully no genocides or anything like that. of course, if determinism holds then i really had no choice in the first place and it doesn't matter anyway.
so yeah, i know what you mean about the ridiculous amount of remorse.
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