Note from Graceland Cemetery Walk- Chicago

There are some good names here. What if my name was Strong or Messenger instead of Barrie? Pregnant women should walk through cemeteries to get name ideas. I'm glad I'm not pregnant. Bertha is a very popular name here at Graceland. I find that a little amusing for obvious reasons but I probably would find it even more so if the name Bertha were spelled Birtha instead. Mench is a good last name. A mensch is a nice person, but what if your name were Mench and you were an asshole? Your very existence would be an oxymoron, kind of like all these Bertha's buried here. The Hooper's are buried here. I thought of Mr. Hooper from Sesame Street. I saw a contemporary version of Lear once with my friend Laura where a ritual about Mr. Hooper from Sesame street was enacted by adults in pajamas with stuffed animals. It was so sad and strange. There are a lot of small reproductions of the Washington monument here. What is that about? Maybe heaven? A cemetery is like an empty village. What if grave stones were more like large books and there were pages behind the cover stones? Amelia Bliss is someone I'm sure I would have liked to have known, but she died before I was born. Wouldn't it be strange if twins always died together within minutes of each other? I'm glad they don't. "Stella, beloved by all" only lived ten years but everyone, everyone loved her so much. I just tried to write the name Yaggy, but autocorrect changed it to taffy. Here' a nice set of names in a family group: Arthur, Meta, Edwin, Virtue, and Lydia. Also, further down, Maxine, Gloria, Dorothy, Elaine, and Vivian. One headstone said, "The fruit of the spirit is love." Must be from a psalm. What if the fruit of the spirit was a watermelon or a kiwi? I think the fruit of my spirit is a love plum. That feels right. What's with all these padlocked, concrete, tiny houses? People should not put the bodies of their beloved inside those. That is not a good idea.


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