RIP Tofu

RIP Tofu, a photo by killah.poopface on Flickr.

Yesterday I visited the Pet’s Rest Pet Cemetery in Colma, just south of San Francisco. I have always wanted to visit Colma for I find cemeteries really interesting, often beautiful, always peaceful and quiet, and pretty helpful in learning new ways of thinking about death and loss. Even of animals.

It was really interesting to see what people name their pets!

And to see that many cultures in the Bay Area devote a lot of time, energy, and money to their pets’ graves. We never had that kind of money, growing up, for a pet cemetery for our beloved pets – an albino guinea pig, Lollipop, and a kitty, Mr. Cinnamon.

I didn’t realize until visiting cemeteries in Mexico that one could plant flowers on a grave – not just use the little flower holder thing for some cut flowers like at the cemeteries I was used to seeing in Maryland, but really go all out, planting a garden, basically, on the plot. I love that.

I love this grave the most at Pet’s Rest, I think. Also because the little guy (gal? I will stick with guy for some reason) was named Tofu, and his picture is on the grave (another thing I never saw in Maryland cemeteries) and he is cute and is clearly much loved.

Also, Colma is a trip! I learned so much more about it from watching Colma! The Musical, which is awesome and hilarious and sad, and indeed a musical. A lot going on there. It was super strange to actually experience being in a tiny town – fewer than 2,000 people live there – where most of what you see is graves, since 1.5 million people are buried there. Since the City and County of San Francisco banned burials in the city and did a mass relocation of graves to Colma in the early 1900s, Colma was founded as a ncropolis! in 1924. Which is crazy to me.  The town slogan is “It’s great to be alive in Colma!” It is quite odd to drive past cemetery after cemetery for miles, with a driving range and casino interspersed but mostly so many graves…16 cemeteries! One after another! Lining both sides of the road! Even a Serbian Cemetery! I visited a few, but will have to go back.