I wandered into the cemetery by chance, while waiting for a photocopying job to be finished, and felt I had crossed into a foreign country.
Unlike the rule-bound Mount Auburn Cemetery, where artificial flowers and ornaments are forbidden, anything goes here. My favorite is the grave with the yellow and gold plastic telephone and the glass blue bird.
Peter, who lived to one hundred, is remembered for his barbering. Without the dates bracketing the span of his life, the design of the gravestone would be appropriate for Peter's barbershop sign.
John Hogan must have loved Coke Classic. To the right of the bottle are three quarters.
Memorial knick-knacks.
The perspective of the heavenly staircase is dizzying to me.
Images of the Virgin prevailed, many gravestones carved with the Hail Mary.
Here, with a mossy roof, is a tiny icon of the Virgin.
Every once in a while, the wind would lift the bright balloons tethered to a gravestone. Startled, I would catch the motion out of the corner of my eye, mistaking the balloons for a person leaning over the grave, but I was the only one walking among the gravestones, which bore the signs of fresh tributes. The smell of lilies rose from a heap of flowers over a fresh grave. I took my last picture: a flamboyant cross.
