"Laid to Rest": You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet!

I happened on the cemetery in Santa Clara, Calif., as I was making my way to my most favorite place to be in all of California: The Carmelite Monastery on Lincoln Avenue in Santa Clara.

In all the years I've gone to the monastery, I'd never driven that route and not that far down on Lincoln Avenue. That's where the street dead-ended: into the cemetery.

Since I had some extra time that day, I said,"Why not? Go on in and see what's in there?"

I was not prepared for what I saw.

Not having ever visited any of the national cemeteries, I didn't know this is how "deserving" people get laid out: in GRACE AND STYLE!!!

I don't know about all those other national places, but this place was beyond my wildest imagination for a graveyard.


The Santa Clara Mission Cemetery is something to behold. It's a Catholic cemetery, where Jesuits priests and others are buried. Ordinary Catholics, mostly of Portuguese and Italian descent, are also buried there. It is my understanding, from folklore, that at one time, Catholics had to be buried only in Catholic cemeteries, and this is why ordinary people got in there. Today, it probably is more restrictive as to the person who gets to be laid to rest there.

Row after row of the most impressive tombs and tomstones you can imagine.


Inside the cemetery, there are crypts, graves and mausoleums, some as big as cottages; others like huts, and yet others like little doll houses in which you'd want to play.


I'd always felt eery visiting normal cemeteries or graveyards. But in this place, I felt the majesty...yes MAJESTY...of the PRESENCE of the remains that laid within.


What impressed me even more, though, was the fact that I knew there was NO LIFE in there...there was no breathing, living entity, i.e. no Soul, living in these beautiful surroundings.

As I drove around, the eeriness started: these are TOMBS..these are beautiful TOMBS...but tombs...empty of life, nonetheless!
I began to wonder what each of these "bodies" when they housed Souls had done to warrant such an impressive "laying to rest" in eternity.

So, I began to check out the names and the titles.


Then, I knew.

According to the official brochure, the Santa Clara Mission Cemetery is the first Christian cemetery in the Santa Clara Valley.

"It was founded by the same Franciscan Padres who founded the Mission Santa Clara de Asis in 1777. As the population of the valley grew, the tiny cemerery filled.

Within the space of 50 years, the church of Mission Santa Clara changed locations four times. With each church, there came a new cemetery, ending with the cemetery at the fourth and present site on today's campus."

The current cemetery was founded in 1851.

"It still serves the Valley in the tradition of the Franciscan Padres. Many pioneers of the Santa Clara Valley are buried there. This includes Spaniards, Mexicans and Americans and other of rich and varied ethnic backgrounds."

In the early 20th century, new features were added to the current facility.

The pioneers of the Catholic Santa Clara mission were men and women of the cloth. People who had given their lives, i.e. their time spent on earth, serving other people by trying to bring them closer to God.


Of Course.

It made sense.

These men and women of the cloth certainly deserve an impressive "laying to rest" in eternity.

After all, serving humanity when you're a Soul in a Body is a difficult job, perhaps the most trying job yet. You've got to deal with people who have massive EGOs, those who worship money more than anything else... and you come...talking about GOD? Yes. Their job on earth was not easy.


It seemed a just reward to come to such a fitting end.

Have you thought of how you'd be "laid to rest"?

Have you started thinking enough of what you're doing as a Soul in Your Body to warrant a beautiful end?

If not, I encourage you to go visit an ordinary cemetery, where the ordinary people go and have their bodies spend the rest of eternity. Yes, they are more personal. Like the day I happened on an obscure graveyard in Fremont, and met Leo, who visits his wife's gravesite every day. They'd been married for more than 50 years. After nine months of her being gone, Leo still was feeling her absence.



Leo was suffering in a way that tells you he has no comforter on earth, now that his life partner is gone. He was devastated.

Contrast that with those at the Santa Clara Mission Cemetery. Throughout that huge graveyard, there was not one soul sitting in front of a grave. NOT ONE living Soul, mourning and crying out for these men who had departed.
You have to wonder why.


When your job is done so completely on earth, even those you leave behind have to KNOW that you're in a better place. They don't have to keep following you around, haunted by the yesterdays. If your life is not lived from an EGO center, where you rule everything, then you would have prepared even your loved ones for your inevitable demise.


So, I advise you to go to one of the national cemeteries or as close to one as you can get.

See where you'd rather spend eternity.


Then, you'd know that right there...

In these graveyards: that's where "heaven" and "hell" are decided. Those are places for the living, not the dead!


No waiting to transcend up.

You can see the evidence right there.


The men of the cloth end up in some form of "heaven."


"Ordinary" men end up with their loved ones suffering some form of "hell."


About Death, Leo Tolstoy says, "Death is the breaking of the vessel in which our spirit was enclosed. You should not confuse the vessel with what is inside it.

If you are afraid of death, you should remember that the fear is not in death itself, but in you. Becoming a better person means that you will fear death less. No matter what happens to you, you will always be happy if you are united with God."

He adds,"God is eternal, all embracing and exists across space and time. God is all there is. All exists in him. All life, when it appears, does not come from nothing, but rather from God. And when death takes us, it does not take us to nothing. It takes us to God."

Do you want to be "laid to rest," or do you want to perpetuate the human suffering? The question we should all ask ourselves every day, as the reflection of our Soul becomes manifest to the world: Is the way we're living our lives part of the problem or part of the solution? When we "show up," do people cringe at the pain we display, or do we empower them by our reflective light? Those are all questions that will surface when we're being "laid to rest": would people feel relieved that you've been released from the burden of living, as it seemed too much for you to bear even when you were in PERFECT HEALTH, or would they be somewhat saddened that "a light" has gone out in their world by your absence?

As for me, I plan to be cremated with my ashes spread as fertilizer for roses somewhere. "For dust thou art and to dust thou will return."


Genesis 3:19.





I do not even want a "viewing" of my body, which in the absence of my Spirit and Soul would not be "me."

So a simple Memorial Service with a picture of the "me" that was...would suffice. I just hope that when that time comes, I would have left at least the scent of a "rose" behind!


Ah...to be...just "The Scent of a Rose!"

Ah...to be..."Just the Scent of a Rose!"
To leave such a beautiful fragance behind!
The Scent of a Rose!
That's what I long to be!



Namaste',

Che'