Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Expressing emotions...

guess at what kind of cemetery this picture was taken....... this stone belongs to Iko, who lived from 1991 till 2004.
yes, at a pet cemetery! this is the pine ridge pet cemetery in dedham, a little south of boston. i found it accidentally, while searching for cemeteries in the neighborhood. no clue what to expect we went there. all stones were alike, but their texts differed greatly. what most of them had in common, was a great display of emotions. tim said he was deeply moved. he was laughing, too. but then i realized he really was. and he was right. there was sooo much more emotion expressed about these lost pets than i ever saw on any cemetery for people!! something i am always looking for, but hardly ever find.
why is it that it is so much easier to say something sweet about your pet than about your husband? wife? father, mother? etc...? 
it really made me wonder..... let me think a little more before i pose a conlcusion! :)
here some more pictures of this cemetery. unfortunately we could only visit the new section. there is also an old section (with graves from the early 1900s!!) further up the hill (thats probably prettier), but the cemetery was right next to an animal shelter that just started renovation and the old part was not accessible.
and here are my fellow taphophiles!!

10 comments:

Kay said...

These are wonderful! What a find! I've never seen anything like this with so many beautifully carved gravestones!

Our pets are (usually) pure, unconditional love. Human relationships are (usually) more complicated. I wonder if people are more concerned about making human memorial stones more "dignified."

Kate asked me to send her my rice pudding recipe. It's made with honey - not too sweet. Let me know if you want me to email it to you too.

VioletSky said...

perhaps some of us say these deeply emotive things to animals rather than people because they cannot laugh at us for it?

Kate said...

Now I have to check around to see if I can find a pet cemetery, too. Love this verse!

biebkriebels said...

Yes with pets it is a different way. I don't know how, but I think the unconditional love they give is a part of it. They never argue with you...

SeaThreePeeO said...

I think the fact that pets love unconditionally go a large way towards this. After all ou don't reall have to work at the relationship with your dog.

Great picture

Julie said...

So ... if humans are prepared to express honest emotions to pets, because pets don't have their own intellectual capacity, what does it say about us humans? All you have to do with a pet is feed it and occasionally scratch behind the ears. But with humans much more is required.

Do humans not really give their all to other humans unless they are subservient? Do we only really love those who dont answer back, dont challenge?

There has to be more to it than this, because all those things I have posed I dont believe in.

It is a good question, one to which I have no easy answer. Perhaps it has something to do with our societal expectations of what goes on a gravestone.

The verse on this is cute, but perhaps from a greeting card!

Julie said...

Your pet cemetery is a decent distance from the centre of Boston. Hope you and Tim have a car rather than cycle. Is Tim Dutch, too?

Francisca said...

My thoughts are similar to Julie's. We loved and cared for our pet dog, but we did not compare that love to human love and relationships.

hamilton said...

i was also thinking this sounds like a good greeting card sentiment. I'm not sure I would want anything so sentimental on my stone.

Stefan Jansson said...

I don't think I have seen such a stone before, there's a pet cemetery I bike through most every day but you would never see something like this there.