In the movies, funerals always happen on rainy, cloudy, cold days. People wear thick black coats. Black umbrellas populate the crowd, as the rain pours down. But I have never been to a funeral where it rained. I have never even been to one when it was cold. Granted, the funerals I’ve attended have been in Hawaii, where if it does rain it rains for 15 minutes and it’s rare for a cloud to stretch the entire day. However, I would certainly take a gloomy day over a sunny day. The general mood at funerals is reflected better by the cold and the rain than the sun and the warmth.

There is a graveyard near my home. I notice it more than any other because the headstones are imbedded in the grass and the only thing that is three-dimensional is a statue in the middle. Thousands of cars drive by this graveyard daily and its doubtful any one of them gives it a second thought. After a strong, windy day, fake flowers blow into the intersection of Shipyard and 17th Street. Besides having the headstones flush with the ground, people are not allowed to place real flowers on their beloved’s grave. They are allowed fake flowers. As my wheels roll over a bouquet of fake day lilies, I wonder how that seemed like a good idea. Fake flowers may last longer, but they get bleached out by the sun and they are ripped away by the wind. It seems like an excuse not to pay reverence to the dead. It makes it easier to forget, easier to move on when you only replaced the bleached out, faded roses of last month with a fresh batch of fake daisies.

This sanitized, washed out version of a graveyard causes me to wonder the ideals behind it. People live their lives as individuals; we strive to be better, to be different. How would we feel to be in a grave that mirrors the one next to us? We are one headstone in the same format, equidistance from the graves beside us which are equidistance from those beside them. All in perfect little rows like a vegetable garden. We’re just one of hundreds of graves that our loved ones have to try to remember where we are and then search, unsure if they are stumbling in the right direction, before frustrated, they give up, throw the fake flowers to the ground and head back to their cars. The graveyard fascinates me. It is clean and uniform. There are rules to follow. I didn’t know graveyards could resemble private schools so closely.

The South is known for their obscure and old graveyards. In my coastal town, people have built around them, leaving small graveyards in sectioned lands behind the privacy fence of a home. Churches have small headstones popping out of the ground behind their doors, like oversized mushrooms. The deep-rooted graveyards with their rusted gates and iron work banners welcome you into a distinctive patch of headstones that tower unevenly with the one next to it. One grave is forward and the grave next to it is slightly further back. One gravestone is a huge, thick monument to an adored man who died in 1910, while the one next to it is an angled one, with a statue of an angel watching over it since 1892. Each grave is characteristic, it is unique and the families took time to make that burial place reflect the one they lost. The deceased personality is weaved into the stone structures. People have left personal items, a kazoo, a can of their favorite beer, a letter bleached by rain and sun. They leave flowers whose fragrance lingers around the grave before absorbing into the dirt.

Yesterday, it was very cold. The rain came down as spittle. The sunshine was gone from the sky, as though it had been banned for doing something wrong. The thick gray clouds hung low and ominous. The police stopped traffic in front of the manicured graveyard to let in a funeral procession. People huddled close to one another under a purple tent and shuddered with umbrellas held high. They sobbed. The entire mass seemed to breathe in as one and release a quivering mourning for their loved one. They wailed and screamed. They showed passion for the passing of someone they cared for. It was a beautiful day for a funeral.

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