here is a bit of writting that i did for my book class. i am happy with this. thought i would post it.

I miss the huge old cemetery near my apartment in Chicago. I found it one day last summer while exploring my neighborhood and continued to visit it regularly until I left. Hundreds of graves from the past two centuries crowd into 2 miles of grassy knolls and oak-lined gravel roads. I spent hours wandering through the rows of graves, peering into mausoleum windows, and tracing my fingers over names and dates. I made-up memories for people I never met and filled in their lives with accomplishments, failures, pain and love. I wasn’t alone there. My stories of their lives kept me company.

Some of my favorite graves were the headstones that held little oval or round sealed picture frames. These framed tiny sun-bleached photographs of couples dressed in pantsuits from the 60s and 70s made me smile. Their inhabitants beamed at me with their bushy side burns, bouffant hairstyles and large coke bottle glasses trying to tell me about their children, the houses they lived in and what eventually killed them. It fascinated me that even after death someone through a simple picture could give me such a clear visual image of his or her lives. Or at least, what I thought their lives were like.

It bothered me that I was creating this alternative world for these people. I knew that what I held in my mind had nothing to do with the real person lying beneath my feet. But then I realized that eventually all stories and histories will be lost for most people. All that will remain will be the sparse summary of their lives told through words and images carved into their headstone. The only stories then left about their lives will be the ones that the casual wanderer in the graveyard makes up.