Dead in Peru

I was out for a walk to the local university in Arequipa, Peru recently, when I saw out of the corner of my eye a huge edifice with an inscription, "The Family of ..." in a cemetery. I don't often see families together in life, let alone in death, so I found a gate and entered in just to satisfy my morbid curiosity about whatever the hell I was thinking about. Not surprisingly, I found a range of post-life experiences, some of which surprised me. Take, for example, Julia Bueno, d. 1928, who died almost a hundred years ago, and who still has at least one person leaving flowers. Why? Who would care?

Others are lined up in galleries row upon row, and galleries abound in this cemetery. So too do the family crypts. I had some family somewhere, most of whom, those I know, are dead, and I don't give them more than passing thought. I don't care about the dead, and it might say something as well that I don't have any children. One might wonder if the galleries and the family crypts are actually about individuals at all or if they are simply about place-holder people. I don't have any answers here.

I did see the dead respected for whatever reasons. Those reasons are beyond me. I see that some do not survive the time. One might wish to be a good person and so to be remembered by those who couldn't possibly recall the living being. But life is not fair, and one cannot say of another that he or she did not deserve to be loved in death. sometimes people just get buried and left, and sometimes they get buried and rooted out. For me, living still, there is a wonder that I can't satisfy. I will never know if I am forgotten and buried or forgotten and burned or just forgotten. But in this life I can look at others and live with their experience because others cared at least a little bit and left some of that for me to think on.

The university might teach things of this nature, but I missed that part.

I might have learned something in a walk through the grave yard. It'll pass.