Tuesday, April 27, 2010

So bad it's good. Almost.

On Saturday afternoon I stopped at a cemetery to visit my Grandma and Grandpa's graves. I hadn't been there since my Grandma died over twenty years ago (the cemetery is a ways out of town), and I decided to take a walk around while I was there. The last time I was in a cemetery, I found some, well, unusual headstones, and on Saturday I found another doozy:





You can click on the photo to embiggen. Sorry about the poinsettia in the way. (Dear relatives: It's April. You can remove the poinsettias.) Basically, it's a bucolic nature scene, with a man, a woman, and a cat (!) on the left; the man is reaching across a stream to a buck on the other side. Why is he reaching out to the deer? I don't know! Maybe he had a pet deer as a kid?
One thing's for sure: They had a cat named Morris.




I have all kinds of questions about this headstone, namely: Why is the lady so flat? Granted, I myself am not chestfully endowed, but if I was going to be represented on a headstone, you'd better bet I'd give myself a nice rack. Why not? I'd be dead; who's gonna call me on it?
'
Also, who's the artist? Oh, wait, was it Morris? And he signed his name? Nah, I'm pretty sure Morris was the cat. I am guessing that the artist was one of the deceased (before they died, obv), or possibly a family member. Frankly, the artwork leaves a little to be desired*, but then again, maybe the headstone maker was at fault. Maybe he was presented with a fantastically detailed piece of art, and this was the best he could do.
'
And I got to thinking, having a bad headstone is kind of like having a bad tattoo; you don't have to look at it, but everybody else does. Forever, in the case of the headstone.

And then I wondered if the cat was buried with them. I mean, he is in the picture, after all. But then ....... what about the deer?

It keeps coming back to deer, doesn't it? I found YET ANOTHER set of deer remains on Sunday; I'm not even kidding you. One of these nights I'm gonna hear a tap, tap, tapping on my front door, and it's gonna be a deer, wanting in. Wanting his dead relative's bones, probably.






*Could I do better? NO I COULD NOT.

4 comments:

Fish Food said...

Good Lord. That doesn't even seem decent to put at a grave.

If I decide to have a grave stone (I am leaving instructions!) it has to be one of those serious ones. No copying a holiday photo onto granite for me. Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Maybe it's a cautionary tale; maybe the deceased was killed by a stampeding deer that he was trying to innocently pet :-) People do weird things when it comes to death. I'm happy that they mentioned the cat, though.

Heather said...

To me every headstone has an element of mystery. This is definately one of them! Does make ya wonder if they were aware of what their headstone was going to look like or if someone thought it was a good way to represent who they were..like people who loved nature.

rockygrace said...

The more I look at that headstone, the more I think how hilarious it would have been if they had just used stick figures.