91 years old 56 years ago

:) !

More and more people here are getting cremated these days. as in probably all urban areas, the graveyards here are mainly full and there is a lot of encouragement of cremation. But it is still a matter of surprise when it happens -- most people are buried as corpses. My wife and I keep telling people we want to be buried as non-intrusively (and as greenly) as possible, preferably without embalming, and with a fruit tree or berry bush planted over us. I like the idea of providing my visiting friends a handful of raspberries or a sweet crisp apple after I am dead. :)

But yes, this is a fairly old cemetery for these parts. The oldest stones are from the 1840s and the number of new ones diminishes every year. When an aunt of mine died in 2001 we tried at first to get her buried in this graveyard because her parents and a couple of siblings were buried there, but we were told it was full. Afterwards, they told us that they *could* have fit her in the old family plot. But it was too late then.

This graveyard is in my neighbourhood and we walk through it a couple of times a week. I see new cremation graves every time I go through it: they use a lot less space than the regular corpse grave.