In North America, at some point in the past, we decided that we need to stuff the whole concept of death and the dead into the closet, treating it like that semi-crazy uncle from Moosomin. In general, people don’t talk about death until it’s forced upon them…, kids are shielded from it…, if we do speak of the deceased, it’s in hushed, reverent tones…, the only color acceptable at funerals is black…

When I finally sell the farm, I’ll insist on no one being allowed to wear black at the funeral, there will be dance music pumping out, party hats for all, and every one will have to relate at least one stupid/funny “Alan” story, … the whole thing finished off with a toast of Guinness (or warm soy milk, if you prefer )

So anyhow, cemeteries here seem rather austere: you drive or walk in, you are expected to make no noise, you march off to the grave site, maybe place some flowers and leave.

I visited one cemetery in Magdeburg, Germany (in July 1997) that was awesome… first off, there were trees everywhere (much like the pictures Steve links in his blog), with small gravel pathways among the plots. The plots were square, about 12 feet to a side, often surrounded by a little, 1-foot-high wrought-iron fence, and you could tell that the families cared for and “landscaped” the plot, as if it were a little garden that they tended… which is probably exactly how they saw it. There were wooden benches on the pathways, and it felt more like a city park almost than a cemetery.

The coolest thing I saw there was that a family of four was having a picnic on one of the nearby manicured lawns and the father was playing soccer (oops! football) with his 3-year-old son! It really made it feel as if this were a frequented spot, somewhere that is still connected to the city and to the living, not one of those silent, edge-of-town cemeteries that we in N.A. are probably used to.

Anyhoo, just thought I’d share

• Canada