Land, Ho!

My Mom has been, over the years, been paying on the opening and closing of her cemetery lot so that her children will not be burdened with the expense. She finally made her last payment and she is good to go :-)

I, then, got a phone call from that cemetery informing me that I needed to come by and pick up the deed. I was under the assumption that, as her beneficiary, that is what I needed to do so that when that time came for my mother to use her new digs, everything would be in order.

When I arrived to pick up the deed, I was ushered back into one of their offices. He wanted to get me some coffee or tea and wanted me to sit down. I let him know that my mother was waiting in the car with my children so we needed to make this a rather quick meeting.

Much to my surprise, it was revealed to me that the deed I was picking up was not for my mother but for me and was part of the promotion they were running when she signed the contract for her purchase. However, wouldn't it be a shame, God forbid, if something were to happen to you and you didn't own a double crypt in the space right next to your parents. And wouldn't it be a shame, if, God forbid, something should happen, if you were laid to rest in the opposite end of the cemetery with so much distance between your loved one currently and you, God forbid.

I thought to myself, is this guy for real? Am I really going to care at the point of my death whether I am right next to people I know. For that matter, why don't people buy all the lots up around them so that they will feel more comfortable when they pass on, knowing that they have familiar neighbors.

To top this off, I can have all this just for the mere asking price of $4995.00. But wait! There is more...since we, Michigander's are struggling financially right now, I could purchase at almost 11 percent interest for the next 60 months the double crypt by only paying for one of them. He informs me that nobody is going to want to buy the other since people don't usually mix with other people for only $2500.00 and then when I finish paying for that, I could purchase the other for another $2500.00.

But what if someone decided to go ahead and purchase my upper bunk? What if some strange person were to be in there with me, what would we ever talk about? What if he was a smoker. I don't know if I could live with that. And what if he had smelly habits? How would that work out? I thought about asking him if he had people fill out personality profiles before placing them together but I thought maybe he would think me odd.

I thanked him for his time, but told him that this was definitely not a decision I could make on my own. My husband would really like some say in the matter. Besides I really didn't have the down payment that he was requiring anyway. He suggested I talk to my Mom about lending me the money...you just never know what could happen. I laughed as he mentioned that as my mother state of affairs doesn't allow for gifts of this kind.

In the end, he thanked me for stopping by, handed me my deed...the land that I now own in the Garden of Flags, far, far, far away from the Garden of Creation and off I went realizing I just had managed to escape a salespersons claws and that alone put a spring in my step and a song in my heart.