COTD1

The first cemetery that i attended was the Woodlawn cemetery in the bronx.  When i got there i was amazed to see all of the trouble that people went through to make sure that they were buried in the nicest way possible.  Aside from all of the grave stones that were there in the cemetery their were also a lot of mausoleum's for some of the more richer people.  Some of the mausoleum's that were there were much nicer then what some people are living in today.  One of them which i believe was for the vanderbilt's was literally a castle.  All of this trouble for someone who has died, i think its a bit ridiculous that someone who is dead felt the need that they needed to be buried in a castle.  Some of the more famous people that were buried there were names like Duke Ellington and Miles Davis (jazz legends) and as i stated before the vanderbilt's.

The second cemetery that I went to was on 21st and 6 avenue and it was called the spanish and portuguse synaogog shearith for israel.  This one was much different from the woodlawn cemetery in a lot of ways.  First of this one was about 50 times smaller then woodlawn and was not as well kept as woodlawn was.  Although i was not allowed inside of the cemetery i did stand outside for a half an hour and observed as much about it as i could.  Unlike woodlawn these gravestones were not kept very nice, they were chipped away and it seemed as if the writing on them was fading.  Some of them were falling over and were not clean what so ever.  I think that they wanted to give it the original feel of a graveyard without changing anything up even if it would do good to the grave sites.

In conclusion my visit to these cemetery's was actually very interesting and thought provoking.  I had the image that a cemetery was a depressing place where it was just a bunch of repetitive gravestones.  But when i got to woodlawn it completely changed my views on this situation.  There were such amazing statues that made me think so much about how people wanted to be treated after they die.  It made me think a lot about if i want something like this to happen to me when i die or if i would want something else to happen.