I want to abundantly thank everyone who expressed heartfelt support in response to my lament upon the imminent loss of my cat Hawk (as described in yesterday’s blog).  Your compassion is so appreciated.

After work yesterday, I returned for a short visit to Lakeview Cemetery, the site of my Sunday blog, to re-ground myself and put my grief over my pet’s terminal prognosis into perspective.  And that it did.  I strolled about the lush, rolling cast of the reclusive grounds which are decorated with opulent mausoleums of great extent, obelisks of grand height, architectural archways and columns that appear as if they could have been stolen from the ruins of ancient Athens or ancient Rome, and sculptures (both dark and angelic) as large or greater than life. 

So while stopping here and there in reverence to take in the compass of a life completed, I suddenly found my warrior sense of balance and serenity again.  And thenceforth started a playful tour of improvising and articulating poetic epitaphs as I ambled about, fancying myself the poet-laureate of those there placed in bed.  I can only imagine, in retrospect, that I was a sight.  And became a sight enough for sure as out of the blue there appeared a tour bus, Lolly the Trolley. 

It was filled with sightseers hungry to acquire an appreciation of some of the movers and shakers of 18th, 19th and early 20th century Cleveland society so luxuriantly there assembled.  And while they came expecting to take in landscape, architecture, tombs, and perhaps, an occasional passive mourner, unbeknownst to me, I had instantly become their pivotal  interest.  For the bus had snuck up on me while I was sing-songing laureate-like along amidst the green pastures casting, upon each grave I passed, broken-off bits of sycamore bark from a rather huge molted sheet of the same which I had picked up earlier along the way.  But maybe, just maybe, they didn’t hear…maybe they didn’t see??

 Yet all in all, taking everything into perspective, which is stranger: me or a Lolly the Trolley lollying about a cemetery??!!