It appears that some of the bus stops here in SR have been taken over as homesteads by a few homeless folks. Walking Cooper early in the morning it is obvious that two persons are sleeping on the benches at the bus stops. Then, on our late morning/noon walk those persons are now sitting up but covered, one in a rose colored blanket and another in a silver foil cape-like shroud with nothing showing except a small area where a mouth would be. In the later afternoon both bodies are gone but their meager belongings, in black garbage bags, are stuffed under the bus benches. Cooper wants to stop and sniff. I purposefully yank him away.
About a mile from that bus stop is a rural cemetery, easy to miss if you don't take the shortcut to avoid College Avenue. There is a normal cemetery there as well, one that currently accepts dead people, but the rural one is the best. In cemetery years it is still a newbie, it can't rival those in Europe or even in older cities like Boston or New Orleans, but it has markers from the mid 1800's, so it has some age on it, some credence. It is lovely to walk through if you like cemeteries, which I do. Many of the markers and headstones are cracked and crumbling, the grass is not too high but not manicured. But even today there were still Christmas memorials on a few old graves, graves that had dates from the 1920's and 1930's, so not everyone is forgotten. A great Gramma, perhaps, or great great uncle.
Today was sunny, about 65, and everything in the cemetery was green. It meanders, there are no straight paths. It's a nice place to visit in the early afternoon, it's quiet and I can let Cooper off the leash. He hunts for squirrels and chases them if he sees them and is totally on alert even if he doesn't. (I can't wait for him to spy a rabbit one day!) I read headstones, he doesn't. Family plots, military graves, lone resting places. Santa Rosa's first mayor is buried there, died in the 19th century. One of the "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" creators is also there, with a very shiny and large marble stone. There are no fancy structures like you see in Europe, just granite or marble or plain stone markers. Very few have words other than the names of the dead. I search for those with an epitaph or a snippet of a poem. I find a few, but not as many as I want. Everytime we visit, I look for more. For some reason, anything on the tombstone other than the name and date feels like a small triumph.
Homeless and the dead. So many and not so far apart.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment