It's only natural that there are superstitions surrounding cemeteries. As a kid I remember being told that you had to hold your breath whenever you passed a cemetery. That didn't really work for me, because I lived across the street from a cemetery during my entire childhood.

It was a little country cemetery, bordered by fields and forest. It probably had about a hundred occupants, dating back to the 1880s. I used to play in it, looking at the tombstones and pretending to talk to the people.

There was an infant buried there who had been born a couple of months before me, and I figured that if she had lived, she would have been in my class at school. So my best friend and I would go and visit her sometimes. There was a brush pile on one side where the caretaker would collect all the faded flowers, and we'd pick through it to find the nicest ones and leave them on her grave. I never once thought about her parents, or how they might have reacted if they found the little wreathes. I don't even know if they visited her, or if it was too painful. But I hope that they wouldn't have minded.

I hope that I'm not coming across as a morbid little kid like Wednesday Adams. To me the cemetery was just a little park where people slept underground, and they'd appreciate some company.

A lot of people want to be cremated when they pass on, and I respect that. But when I die I'd like to be in a cemetery, surrounded by some very quiet neighbors, dreaming quietly underground, being visited occasionally by playing children.