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My Mom and Grandparents are buried in an old Norwegian Lutheran cemetery in Gig Harbor, where I will go too in our family plot. There is no maintenance there or anything, all the plot owners and families form kindof a loose association that gets together and maintains it once a year, the weekend before Memorial day, so I was there again last weekend. We bring mowers and trimmers and rakes, scrub the moss off the stones and get it looking nice, and then we have a pot luck lunch. Someone mows it about once a month, otherwise it is pretty "as-is". We even have to dig our own holes, set our own stones, and plant our own grass over it unless we want to be covered with weeds. The place is wonderfully folkish and precious to me. If this happened there, I would be wanted for murder before it was over.

That cemetary sounds delightful..and it sounds like 'Cuffys Cove' in California, where my son is buried, and where I will go...its just a little Catholic cemetary, and its not one of those well trimmed and manicured cemetaries...they do have a small group of people who maintain it, but they usually just let the natural plants and ground cover grow, and only trim them back, when it gets to looking too tacky...

And that is what I like about this cemetary, its small, its wild, its natural...

Now there are not many Catholics in this stretch of California...so there are only burials once in a while...my son died in 1985, and I think since that time, maybe only five other people have been buried there...

But this cemetary has been there since the beginning of the century, when the area, was a big lumbering area...and many of the lumber workers of that time were Irish and Italian, and most wound up buried in Cuffeys Cove...so there are tons are very old graves, and one can tell by the names, almost all are either Irish, or Italian...

And there are so many children buried there as well, being as childbirth in that remote area at the time period, and childhood diseases of the time, made for many small children buried there....somehow that is also of comfort to me, that my son is with so many other children...

The other thing I like about this cemetary, is its setting...it sits on the top of a cliff, overlooking the Pacific Ocean...its just beautiful...and in Sept. when we buried my son, you could hear and see the sea lions down below, playing on the cliffs in the ocean...a lovlier spot, I cannot think of, in which to be buried...

But what makes it lovelier still, is that I will be buried with family, and that is what is most important, as you also feel, having your own place ready for you, when you are ready for it...

I especially like the idea of a pot luck dinner, after all the work is done...My dearest memories of church, were when we had potluck dinners...got to sample everyone elses best foods, and the fellowship was marvelous

I am sure that your cemetary is quite wonderful...I like those types of cemetaries, where the families show their love, by caring for their own...(Kind of reminds me of the movie 'Driving MIss Daisy', where Miss Daisy refuses to have 'perpetual care' provided by the cemetary for her husband...she wants to do the planting and care herself)