A Visit to an Old Friend

Today Z and I decided to pay a visit to a old family friend. As you probably surmised from the accompanying photo, Sheila passed away almost five years ago from cancer. She was incredibly outgoing, incredibly funny, and loved people of all types. Something that, to me, totally sums up Sheila as a person: shortly after she finished her first round of chemo and when it appeared the cancer had gone into remission, she decided to get a full facelift. As she told me when I visited her soon after the surgery, "I suspect this cancer is going to kill me off. I'll be damned if I'm going to go out looking like an old hag. I'm tired of my face looking like my ass." Cheers, Sheila!

Sheila is interred at Oak Hill Cemetery in San Jose. She's only a few miles from our house so I try to stop by now and again. The cemetery itself is incredibly huge. I couldn't find the stats online but I suspect it spans several hundreds of acres and it has sections dedicated to people of just about every nationality and faith you can think of.

I like visiting Sheila. Graveyards can, for obvious reasons, be very sad and sobering. But because many graveyards are frequently large and set apart from the suburban hustle and bustle, they can also be peaceful and contemplative places to visit. Apparently I'm not the only one who feels this way because at Oak Hill, I frequently see people with fancy cameras taking photos of statuary, people with books reading under one of the huge oak trees, and sometimes even people eating lunch.

Before I end this post, I want to share a photo of one of the chapels. It was, in fact, where we held Sheila's memorial service. It's supposed to be non-denominational for people of all (or no) faiths. Which is why I suppose it has such a unique architectural style:



I think this place looks like a cross between someone's idea of an English hamlet and what I imagine Bilbo Baggin's local community center would look like if the Shire had one. The inside is even more interesting as there are two small streams of water running down either side of the aisle lending the place a very zen-like feeling.

Oh, one last thing. For you trivia buffs, here's a list of some of the famous folks residing at Oak Hill. I didn't know who half of them were but still pretty interesting stuff.