That is the question I was recently asked from a friend of a friend who went on to ask why I write about death and dying and cemeteries all the time.  My answer was simple:   “This is a blog from a cemetery and funeral home.  What would you expect me to write about?”

I could understand the question if I were a comedian with a website and this is all I wrote about instead of “funny stuff”.  Without insulting the “friend of a friend”, people should become educated on what is involved in making cemetery and funeral arrangements so as to be able to better deal with “cemetery” types on the worst day of their lives.  This blog is meant to help with that education.

Quite frankly, it is my hope to be able to reach out to as many people as you wish to share this blog with to help them, regardless of whether or not they choose Calumet Park Cemetery in Merrillville, Indiana or not.  The information is sound, it is factual and every once in awhile, a story with a message is written to help drive home a point.  Whether you have visuals in your mind connecting death to light at the end of a tunnel, the grim reaper or transformation from this life to another, death is out there.  It is ugly, it hurts, in haunts, and paralyzes and it is as real as real can get….and still we deny that it will hit our home….until it does.

So, you won’t see jokes but you will appreciate having spent a little time at this blog when the time comes to be involved in making cemetery and funeral arrangements.  If you have any questions or comments, or if you would like an in-depth study on a certain aspect of this strange but essential business, write to me at dmoran@calumetparkcemetery.com and I will be glad to answer them.

For more information, go to calumetparkcemetery.com or call 219-769-8803.

What the heck, read on:

True Tombstone Inscriptions

Harry Edsel Smith of Albany, New York:
Born 1903-Died 1942
Looked up
the elevator shaft to see if the car was on the way down.
It was.

******************************
In a Thurmont, Maryland, cemetery:

Here lies an Atheist
All dressed up And no place to go.

******************************
On the grave of Ezekial Aikle
in East
Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:
Here lies Ezekial Aikle, Age 102.
The
Good Die Young.
******************************
In a Ribbesford, England,
cemetery:
Anna Wallace:
The children of Israel wanted bread,
And the
Lord sent them manna.
Old clerk Wallenstein wanted a wife,
And the Devil
sent him Anna.
******************************
In a Ruidoso, New Mexico,
cemetery:
Here lies Johnny Yeast.
Pardon me
For not rising.

******************************
In a Uniontown, Pennsylvania, cemetery:

Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake.
Stepped on the gas
Instead of
the brake.
******************************
In a Silver City, Nevada,
cemetery:
Here lays The Kid.
We planted him raw.
He was quick on the
trigger
But slow on the draw.
******************************
A
lawyer’s epitaph in England:
Sir John Strange.
Here lies an honest
lawyer,
And that is Strange.
******************************
John
Penny’s epitaph in the Wimborne,
England cemetery:
Reader, if cash thou
art In want of any, Dig 6 feet deep; And thou wilt find a Penny.

******************************
In a cemetery in Hartscombe, England:

On the 22nd of June,
Jonathan Fiddle Went out of tune.

******************************
Anna Hopewell’s grave
in Enosburg
Falls, Vermont
Here lies the body of our Anna –
Done to death by a banana.

It wasn’t the fruit that laid her low, But the skin of the thing that made
her go.
******************************
On a grave from the 1880s in
Nantucket,
Massachusetts:
Under the sod and under the trees,
Lies the
body of Jonathan Pease.
He is not here, there’s only the pod.
Pease
shelled out and went to God.
******************************
In a cemetery
in England:
Remember man, as you walk by,
As you are now, so once was I.

As I am now, so shall you be.
Remember this and follow me.
To which
someone replied by writing on the tombstone:
To follow you I’ll not
consent
Until I know which way you went.