perspective...

It is not always easy to get perspective, particularly when you (by you, of course, I mean me) are in the middle of a million deadlines with projects and people and circumstance tugging at you relentlessly.

Yet, it is important to try to get some perspective...

Mine came in the form of this article.

I am a cemetery visitor.  I put them on the list of places I need to see when I travel. I know, it sounds creepy.  [I read obituaries, too -- particularly when I have the print version of a paper in front of me -- it's a family trait.] I have had chocolate and champagne parties at cemeteries whenever I could find some live companions who were game.  And, I set aside time at Thanksgiving and Christmas to visit my grandparents, my friend from junior high and various other relations ...at the cemetery.

Sometimes I imagine myself as an old woman going to funerals of people I don't know ... who might not have a lot of people to mourn them. It breaks my heart when I read that there will be no services.  I know that they are expensive and the cost might not be justifiable when there is no one to mourn.  But it still breaks my heart ... all lives should be celebrated and all souls should be helped along to the other side, even if it is by strangers.

So, I guess it is no surprise that this story touched me.

Consider this if you don't have time to read the whole piece:

"I'm not here for a specific person," said Ed Pilolla, 39, of Torrance. "I came … just to pay some respect, give some recognition to those who officially have no recognition," he said.

Pilolla attended with six friends from the Los Angeles Catholic Worker, which runs a soup kitchen on skid row and a hospitality house in Boyle Heights.

"A lot of people who came to our soup kitchen — in poor health or estranged from their family — probably have ended up here," said Ann Boden, 56.

"You have the 1% at the top," Boden said. "This is the 1% at the bottom."

 And another tip of the hat to the Los Angeles Times for giving space to this story.  Remember your dead (and your living, too)... even if you can't get to where they are resting.