Silly, the things

that come back from my memories.....like one October day when someone came up to me and asked me if this was a real graveyard.

Happens all the time, that is the most common question we get on the display is "are those tombstones real?"

The first thing I say is.....:) Yep, I carved them out of stone myself Then, I laugh, answer their questions and maybe have them grab a FAQ sheet from the display.

But this time was different.

This time, these people meant it. The did not speak much English, but I came to understand why they asked about the graveyard being real. It seems there were they are from, the family is buried in the yard of the home. Since they could not read everything on the tombstones to know that were are fake. They genuinely wanted to know.

Is this graveyard real.

Flattered as I was, it made me think.

I do this every October for fun and the entertain myself, and I do know that I am making a realistic (kinda) graveyard from my perspective. I know that there are family plots, but I had not thought about the current cultures that actually keeping their family's bodies on the property and how seeing this would affect them.

They did seem disappointed that it was not real. It is like they found something that reminded them of their home....and it turned out to be fake. That is not the reaction that we generally get. I saw what I was doing in a different light for just a second. Which made me a bit sad and for some reason ashamed.

To this day, that conversation pops into my head from time to time. Someone says something that reminds me of it, or I am standing in the yard in the exact spot where the conversation took place, or something. Afterwards, I am left with a melancholy feeling that I just can't shake.