Shopping Spree

I’m not a guy who enjoys shopping. I only go when I desperately need something, and even then, I’m in and out as quickly as possible.

The exceptions are books – I love to browse a good bookstore; and gadgets. I could spend a few minutes at Best Buy.

But for most things, I don’t subscribe to the Shopping as Sport theory.

But yesterday I went shopping for something I never imagined I would do. Fortunately, I’ll never have to do it again.

Yesterday I bought my own gravesite.

I should back up a bit to put this in context.

If you’ve read this blog for awhile you know my mother passed away this past spring. She had wanted to be cremated, and we scattered her ashes in the ocean at Nags Head, North Carolina.

But I kept a small amount of her ashes, with the idea that I would buy a burial plot for her back here where we live. Although our family is not originally from this part of the country, we’ve lived here for awhile. This place is home now for me, especially since my children were born here. My mom lived here, too, for many years, and in the last year of her life she told me a couple of time she wished she had never left. So there is a case to be made that this could be her final resting place.

Selfishly, I want to have a burial site for her here so I can bring Chris and Tommy to her grave on Memorial Days. Though they never really knew her while she was alive, I’d like them to understand a part of their heritage, their family history.

I told MBW about this plan, and she was on board with the idea. But then she took it one step further.

“Why don’t you buy three plots?” she said.

“Um, why should I do that?”

“Buy two for us,” she said, “so she won’t be there all alone.”

That was one of the most touching things she has ever said.

Both my wife and I are transplants to this city and state. We have no ancestors buried anywhere near here. There isn’t a ‘family plot,’ for either one of our families of origin, within 750 miles. So it is true that if we buried my mothers’ ashes here, she would be ‘alone,’ as far as being near relatives.

Honestly, I don’t think my mom would care. But I was so moved by what MBW said that I decided to do it.

So I went out shopping for gravesites.

I walked into the cemetery office and the woman at the desk said, “May I help you?”

“Yes,” I said, “I’d like to buy some burial plots.”

She picked up a walkie-talkie and said, “Doug, a customer is here; come in and show the property please.”

Show the property?

Yes, they sell this like real estate. Which, I guess, technically it is. But I wasn’t prepared to be taken around in a golf cart and given the sales pitch.

Doug drove me around the office and up a hill. He pulled over, we got out, and as we walked he gave me his pitch. “It’s one of the best values in the area,” he said. “It goes up in value every year. You’re making a wise decision to buy now, to lock in the savings. It will cost far more in the future, when you actually need it. Also, it makes sense not to burden your heirs with having to do this for you.”

He stopped, pointed to an area with no markers, and said, “This is a lovely section, with several nice sites left. From here you have both mountain and valley views.”

Mountain and valley views?

He’s selling me a view lot!

Um…how well can you enjoy this view from SIX FEET UNDER?

But I didn’t say that. I know he’s talking about the view for the people who will come to visit. Us, for now, when we pay respects to my mom. Perhaps some day in the future, Chris and Tommy will come to pay respects to MBW and I. Chris will turn to Tommy and say, “That’s vintage Dad. Even dead, he has to have a nice view.”

Or maybe they’ll have moved far away, and it won’t matter.

I went ahead and bought the property. The view lots. Paid cash. Gave the manager my mothers’ ashes. By the time this is posted, she’ll be laid to rest. There will be no ceremony – we’ve already done that, exactly as she wished. No, this is for me, for my boys, for some small sense of family, of heritage, of history.

Sometime between now and Memorial Day I will buy a marker for her, have it placed on her grave. There’s no rush.

And next spring, on Memorial Day, we’ll go up there and place flowers on her grave. Say a few words. Start a family tradition.

It’s weird, in a way, to stand on the place where you know, one day, you are going to be laid to rest. I don’t know if we will move someday, buy a new house, a vacation property, whatever. I may live in many places, or I may never move again. But I have now bought my final home.

And I learned something else in this whole process that I found interesting.

It turns out you can buy one burial plot, but have two people buried in it. Doug explained it like this:

“You can, if you choose, bury two family members in the same plot. They will each have their own casket. When one person dies, they will be buried in the plot. When the second person dies, the grave will be dug up to just above the first casket, and the second casket laid just over the top of the first one.”

“It’s more economical,” he said. “Many couples choose this option. Some have said they want to be as close in eternity as they were in life.”

Personally, I think once you’re dead, none of that matters. But you never know.

So I bought two plots. One for my mom. And one for MBW and I. It was the economical choice. Those view lots are pretty pricey.

It’s statistically likely that I will die before MBW. Hopefully, not soon. But when that day comes, she knows where to put me. And I’ll wait there until her time comes as well. I hope she takes a long time to join me.

But when it finally happens, I told her how it’s going to play out. When her time finally comes, they’re going to dig all the way down and get my box out of the ground. She’s going in first. Then they’re going to open my casket, flip me over, close me back up and put me down on top.

She smiled when I told her.

That night we ‘celebrated the joy of being alive,’ if you get my drift. We both had a chuckle, afterward, thinking about that position for eternity.

I read a quote once, somewhere –‘You’re a long time dead.’

So you might as well make sure your ‘final position’ is comfortable.

From a view lot, no less!

It’s great to be The Family Man.