"No real estate is permanently valuable, except the grave."
Mark Twain said that long before the over-population of the world. When he had mused this, in his "Rouging It" while in California, with its then ample land space, permanent space in cemeteries was far from guaranteed.
It wasn't many years later, officials in San Francisco banned burials in the city to favor higher real estate returns, replanted cemeteries at Laurel Hill, at Golden Gate so that developers could manicure new golf courses. Eventually even tombstones from the historic Masonic Cemetery became landfill for the abutments around the Golden Gate Bridge.
In the previous "C'Est La Mort" blog I wrote about why we die--not from a philosophical nor from a religious perspective, but why we must die from a biological point of view.
Here, I ask: "Why we don't die now?"
Yes, strange question.
It's said, everyone wants to go to heaven, but few want to die to get there. Interestingly, again, it is Mark Twain who highlights that not everyone wants heaven: “Most people can't bear to sit in church for an hour on Sundays. How are they supposed to live somewhere very similar to it for eternity?”
To Twain, church was drudgery. To many of us, modern life is weary. Modern life can be a rarely fulfilling, never ending pursuit of elusive contentment.
Many near their twilight say that they wished they had enjoyed the moments over the pursuits. Spent time with loved ones rather than searching for love.
Death is tragic for a moment, and peaceful thereafter. Most repose for eras beside loved ones. It's morbid to think that in death, families reconcile.
We inter our dead in the most tranquil and beautiful places.
They have wonderful Pavilions, memorials, pagodas.
Maybe growing roots on a church pew is hardly heaven, but cemeteries, from certain perspectives can be peaceful.
Why wouldn't we want a break from drudgery? Why wouldn't we want to repose, to sleep, to recline....to rest?
Socrates wrote, "Death may be the greatest of human blessings."
