Grave visit time in Dallas at the shi shi Sparkman Hillcrest Cemetery in Dallas. You can buy a landscaped prime plot overlooking the restful lake for a mere $1.5 million (I did, I asked what the price was for two with a view). The prices have gone up 3 - 4 times in the last ten years so the grave man says. You could buy them and sell them online and maybe make a little moolah if you change your mind about where you want 2 B.
We took my mother-in-law to visits the graves of her parents, her brother and her in-laws. The grandparents are buried right there together - they each bought their plots for $700 and paid them off over ten years but that was long ago, way back when. Single slots (the few left) now go for $15,000 and up in the Fountain View section.
We do a talking tour with my oldest daughter who is with us (who could have been a seventh generation Texan has she been born south of the Red River), just married and living in Dallas, and explain that this was the old Caruth graveyard, founded in the early 1860s. There is Baby Land, not too far from Lullaby Land, where one wee relative is buried. There's the big mausoleum where relatives on the other side of the family are slotted. In there you can buy a spot in the Columbarium in the nosebleed section for $4,000. That's more than throwing your ashes out the car window as some might be wont to do. With funerals costing an average of $6,000, some may opt to just go green and be part of a cement ball on a reef somewhere.
What a theme park, with section names everywhere. They need a Temple of Doom, says my daughter, thinking the whole thing is goulish. The Jewish areas have rocks placed on the grave monuments. We think this is a nice idea. Micky Mantle, Mary Kay, Greer Garson and Tom Landry and other famous people are buried here, rubbin' elbows in the afterlife.
There is a precedent to gift these things for anniversaries and other events in our family of life planners. Had my husband taken me up on the idea 13 years ago, we might have made a good investment. I don't think I want to be thrown off a boat or out the car window or have my ashes lost in some move waiting for everyone to decide where to throw me.
Tromping around the most expensive little pieces of land in Big D after a long expanse of years moving far from family dead and alive, thinking about life and death.
I don't know how much you'd pay for a plot at Père Lachaise, but I bet you it's quite a lot too. Talk about life planners: I've seen quite a few monuments where one of the loved ones is gone and the remaining one has already had his/her birth date engraved. All the children will have to do is have the date of the death done.
I love walking in cemeteries
Posted by: claude | September 11, 2007 at 05:43 AM
My Mom never bought a plot in the cemetery that has a beautiful view, where her mother and father and older relatives were buried. I was so happy to find one for her, a space no one snatched up, so close to her mother.
Posted by: SusieJ | September 11, 2007 at 05:51 AM
I have no plans; I wonder if I should? Greer Garson is there; wasn't she English?
Posted by: tut-tut | September 11, 2007 at 08:06 AM
My family has a section in a cemetery in my hometown. I think they even have a plot purchased for me! I don't really want to be buried, though. I'd donate myself I think.
Posted by: Eva | September 11, 2007 at 10:04 AM
We love to walk through old cemeteries, too. There is an unmarked one at Lake Texoma that we came across years ago. It had markers back to the mid-1800s. Not exactly prime real estate, in fact, it appeared to have been completely forgotten. How sad. Just stick me in an urn, since I won't be there anyway! :)
Posted by: allison | September 11, 2007 at 10:20 AM
For that Price if I had someone buried there a long time ago (no disrespect) I might consider digging them and moving them some where cheap and selling my spot with a view.
In the hills of Arkanssas where Hillbilly Willy livesit is a great Life but we might be tempted to drop them off beside the great Arkansas River and let them float down stream for a while.
Just joking!
10-4 Willy
Posted by: Hillbilly Willy | September 11, 2007 at 06:26 PM
I will betcha I can die, get all fixed up, cremated and spread out for a LOT LESS than that. Don't those people know that burned bodies can be put just about anywhere?
Posted by: Old Horsetail Snake | September 11, 2007 at 06:49 PM
Hoss... dead bodies can't be put anywhere. In this Dallas cemetery,get this, no dead bodies of pets are allowed. Only DEAD HUMANS. So you can't stick Fido's ashes in that casket with you.
Posted by: MotherPie | September 17, 2007 at 05:20 PM