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preparing for the future

by ellen witherite

"OH, YES," the lady was saying, "Aunt Myra, God bless he~, did

want a place on the hillside, but when it came to being III the
sunshine or on high ground-the price for both of them was much too
dear-she always said that she'd prefer being out in the open."

The two women, who were certainly the ordinary lavender-
scented "little old lady" ladies, sat in the seat behind me and calmly,
very sympathetically discussed poor Aunt Myra's home of the per-
petual rest. The subject progressed, or regressed, as subjects seem to
do to Self and Self's concern in this grave matter. Both had, appar-
ently, carefully investigated possible burial sites; one of them had
purchased a lovely little place beside a lake and the other achieved
Aunt Myra's Utopia in a pleasant lot on the top of a hill.

We're glad to know that those who now live stacked on top of
each other in city apartments will most probably have their own little
plots of land to fertilize forever. Supporters of Memorial Parks (and
those who are afraid they may be missing something with abrupt cre-
mation) point to the lovely gardens of graves, the rolling hills, moldy
with marble, in reverence and pride, as if the primary purpose of this
project was land conservation.

"For you know," they would tell us in hushed, horrified tones,
"you know what the construction crews could do to this; think of the
bull-dozers, the houses, the people ... f"

If the people persist in being born at the rate they are now, and
in dying as fast as they have been, we soon will be surrounded by re-
minders of last year's citizens. If the people continue playing bad-
guys and good-guys at the rate they are now, the sturdy granite mauso-
Jems would serve as excellent bomb shelters. That would be a sad
twist of fate: those who now live easily in the assurance of a tranquil
forever-after, having their eternal quiet bombed and battered, and
their sunny domains scarred and burnt. They should surely die at
their earliest convenience so as to take advantage of the calm before
the storm.

If they, the tombists, are worried that they will be forgotten, they
should worry no more-they probably will be forgotten as they want
to be remembered. If they can leave no better epitaph than that en-
graved on stone, if they can leave no better memorial than a cold

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