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GPS: Finding the Dead

No, I'm not running around looking for random dead people anymore.  I don't care if they show up on my doorstep, the answer is "no."

Dead people I know, on the other hand, sure.

I'm in Arizona this week, but before I left Seattle, I went to visit a friend who had passed away.  It's not too hard to find people with Findagrave.com . . . they even have an ap, you know, it case you need to haunt people's graves on the go.  This friend was at Evergreen-Washelli, which is really close to my house.  It's a lovely cemetery, but it's HUGE.  It also is bisected by Highway 99, so you want to make sure you are on the right side of the highway to begin with.

Fortunately, Findagrave gives GPS coordinates.  I looked at the coordinates and was like, "Huh, he appears to be buried in a residential neighborhood."  After everything that happened with Comet Lodge, I wasn't too surprised or alarmed by this.  Instead, I started browsing the Evergreen-Washelli website to see if there was an easier way to find the grave and to check out their rules.

Well no and no again.

So, totally unprepared, I took a hop up Aurora to pick up a posy.

Before I dive into the rest of this story, you should know that Evergreen-Washelli doesn't allow artificial flowers.  Due to dumb luck and a love of all things ephemeral, I had bought real flowers.

I parked my car near the GPS plot point and started walking.  Then I got distracted.

Isn't that pretty, all those stones stretching on forever?

When I looked at the plot point again, I was really far away from it.  So I walked back and stared at someone's yard.  Logically, my friend probably wasn't buried there.  Oh, yeah, logic!  

Evergreen-Washelli is an old cemetery from the days where Catholics didn't like to be buried next to Lutherans.  There are still actual sections for different faiths.  So, logically (if we have to do it like that) my friend should be filed away in the Greek Orthodox section.  

Now we're getting somewhere!  Oooo, what's that domed thingy?


Luckily I stumbled into the Greek Orthodox section.  After wandering around for awhile, I found my friend's tombstone.  I looked up from where I was standing, and I was standing right by my car.  Lesson of the day: follow your gut, not your GPS.

Hope he likes daffodils.


If you missed it, this week's poem is You, In the City.

I'm nearing the end of The Culling, but I've been working hard on something else.  It follows the same characters later in life.  You can expect to see me start posting chapters in about two weeks (!)  In the meantime, our current story is beginning its final arc:
Charlotte’s hand was hovering over her watch when a siren started to sound.  People began to stream down the sidewalks, flooding out into the road.  Some were carrying flags stripped with the colors of all eight states.  Spotting the jeeps and identifying them as military issue, the crowd pressed around them, chanting.  Charlotte’s pulse raced.  Had she really survived the Culling and four of the five war games, only to be killed by a frenzied mob? 
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