Thanatopsis

It would be nice to be buried in an arboreal and sunny setting such as this. This park actually is a burial place, Kansas City's second oldest cemetery, Elmwood.

Sunday, I filled a digital camera card up with over 200 shots of leaves. Fall is when trees are not sought for shade but color. For some reason, verdant oxygen-makers are not as captivating as ones sporting carotine and xanthophyll.

I have nearly crashed my car several times this fall, driving with my eyes averted from the road-at-tire up to the warm light of maples, oaks and other yellow-orange and red-purple things. I imagine the conversation with the police:

"What were you doing?"

"I was looking at the leaves."

I'm sure my insurance company would shudder to hear of this. We'll be testing privacy laws with this; updates as necessary.

I was walking in the cemetery, 50 rambling-looped acres or so, Sunday to take one particular photo for my job. It turned out that two photos were published, one of Sarah Rickart Barret's nondescript headstone, the other of the smashed-up wrought-iron fence, tire ditches and tossed tombstones left over from when an older man's conversion van had a mysterious temporary failing of brakes October 22. I could have been there to witness and photograph that crash myself. Chances were high I would have been, but I was traipsing through the new atrium building at a charter school upon its new classroom dedication instead.

Of course, I was late for that anyway and effectively ditched the "ceremony" part. While administrators and board-types were dedicating, I was letting myself in to the unguarded school annex and snapping artsy-silly shots of beams, sunlight and stone.

So, crazy girls break into unlocked schools and crazy men plow their vehicles down hills and across four lanes before coming to rest at the bottom of a loamy, human-filled hill.

Apparently Abraham Lincoln was rejected by his first object d'amour, too. The historian at Elmwood told me Thursday that Lincoln's approach to proposing to Sarah Rickhart had been to cite the Bible.

"You know, Sarah," he said to her sitting next to him on the porch swing in Springfield. He had watched her grow to womanhood, womanhood back in the early 1800s being 12 to 14 years old or something, while staying with Sarah's sister and brother-in-law, the Butlers, Elizabeth and William. "In the Bible, Abraham marries Sarah." I can't help but picture the delivery as a little bit smarmy. Perhaps any good Christian girl would have swooned.

As the story goes, conveyed to me by someone who actually has read history books on this subject, Sarah left the scene. What an answer. Just walk away. In later years she was said to have regretted the choice, but only because Lincoln turned out to be president and all.

Better for old Abe to have hitched up with Mary Todd; she adored him, didn't think he looked funny. It's useful in a marriage to have adoration.

The cemetery here in Kansas City is just thrilled to have a piece of the 16th presidential pie. Cherry, you think? For honesty such as was shown by our first president in his mythology?

Elmwood is buoyed up by a dedicated crew of unpaid people. Some are board people, with good connections to funds and things like free masonry repair work, and some are just concerned citizen-types, who couldn't bear to see the 1872 (inc.; 1840 burials preceded) cemetery shut its gates and become a weedlot.

In the five years since I have known about this place, the weeds have indeed been tamed to almost a park-pretty state. A Web site details those who have been the regular lawngroomers (one was called up to Iraq this summer) and sometimes mentions the special work days that bring suburban Girl Scouts and others in to trim closely around the stones, pick up sticks and learn a thing or two.

Once I overheard some of the pre-teens commenting about the frequency of emergency sirens. The cemetery is on the edge of an industrial park, steel, closed after its century of use expired with the coming of trade imbalances. The area was considered countryside, over 10 miles east of downtown, back when George Kessler gave it that "City Beautiful" touch. The neighborhood now is rough, I guess, with subsidized housing nearby. The businesses almost thrive, though, places like a trailer maintenance shop, an industrial laundry and even a theology campus established in 1900.

The original endowment for the cemetery was poorly invested and tied up in some "protective" way that made it immobile; recent fundraisers are helping. The Halloween 5K is in its third year. A few burials still take place at Elmwood, there are Memorial Day and other special remembrance ceremonies, and last year there was a wedding in Armour Chapel.

I found out that I could get a spot for my ashes there for only $500. A casket burial ends up costing thousands, but for only one grand, both my husand and I could win a permanent place in what is set to become as popular as Forest Hills Cemetery near Boston.

The vision for Elmwood is to put it on par with such places. Forest Hills describes itself as "an open-air museum," which is what Elmwood trustees would like their park to become. From what I've seen on PBS, Forest Hills is much better maintained. Elmwood's stairs, walls and mausoleums are crumbly, but Forest Hills has had an education trust in place for over a decade to help preserve its 275-acres.

Elmwood seems to be on track for unbroken improvement, so I'm confident it would be an appropriate resting place for my remains. Just think - I could be buried near such Kansas City greats as Jacob Loose of Sunshine Biscuits, Mary Atkins (whose $350,000 donation got the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art off the ground), as well as outlaws, showpeople, land-donors and others who helped build this city.

Sure, my neighbors would not be so amazing as ee cummings or Anne Sexton, but I'm not nearly that amazing either.

Is it creepy to have a "dream burial" place?

Even if I could never actually see the trees, I'd still like to know they're standing around coloring the landscape's light above my eventual grave.

There's always a bit of foolish human hope, too, one that leaves the possibility open that a ghost might actually be able to enjoy the living and the fading leaves of Elmwood Cemetery for whatever eternity there might be, pre-Armageddon, I suppose.

I'm willing to try.