Have you ever just sat quietly in a cemetery? I do this fairly often, and even more often since the passing of my Mother. It is very peaceful there. Soft breezes, birds singing, and the tinkling of windchimes that family members have placed out there in honor of their loves ones. I put one at my Mother and Dad's grave too.
There is a bench that is very near where my Mom and Dad are buried and I usually sit on that bench for a while. Today, I went to a friend's Dad's funeral visitation. While they had the service, I went out and sat on the bench for about an hour.
Even though it is peacefully quiet there, there is so much going on at a cemetery that you just don't think about until you sit there for a while and watch the comings and goings of the worker bees. There are back hoes, front end loaders, golf carts, all doing something different. There are mowers, weedeaters, men with shovels leveling grave sites. There are people setting up the chairs and mats and the tents over the new burial site. And there are also the others visitors like me, coming to check on their loved one's grave or to sit quietly for a while, there is something going on every where.
Today I watched them put a concrete vault in the ground. Never gave it much thought before about how all that stuff is done, but it is interesting. The front end loader operator wraps chains around the vault and malipulates his way around until he is positioned just so, and then he lets the vault down into the ground and it seems to fit just right. I missed the part of getting the chains off the vault, I got distracted by the back hoe digging a new grave in another area.
There were six people being buried out there today. That's another thing I never give much thought to. Just how many people are buried in a given day in one cemetery alone. Then there are so many cemeteries with lots more burials. That's a lot of grieving families daily. I am not alone in that grief. There are so many of us.
There is quite a production line in the funeral home, moving one body in a room, then into the chapel, then out to the grave site and into the ground, while another one is moving around inside the funeral home, getting ready for the next step. Hummmm...I know this is a little morbid thing to write about, but I got caught up in the fact that it is all about business, not the families who are grieving their lost loved one, but the business of moving them in and moving them out. The employees just get hardened to what is happening around them. They might as well be selling a car or stocking the shelves at Wal-Mart. Sad.
Not to worry!! The whole family (1 kiddo & dog) will be going...along with the laptop! We will leave 7 a.m. saturday morning. I plan to keep everyone posted on my travels. I just don't know how long it will take for me to find a comfortable wifi spot. You will hear from me soon!
BTW...I was glad to hear about your test results!!