Tuesdays With Alan

As per our usual Tuesday morning outing, Alan and I moseyed around town to get a little exercise together and to keep updated on the latest news. We always cross the new Pedestrian Plaza in the center of town and pass by this lovely tilework bend/wall which was done by a delightful young woman, Zenda Alpizar, who is the daughter of our family doctor.
Then we decided to walk clear across town to the local cemetary to check out our LSA's new aquisition--a corner plot with six gravesites.

A little history on this: When Alan's wife, Ruth, died she was buried in a fancy cementary on the other side of the Central Valley, near the town of Heredia. Alan always mentioned to me that he thought it was more proper to be interred locally, even if the local cemetary was rural and less dignified, and that's what he wanted for himself. Unfortunately, in our local cemetary the rule was that burials would have to be above ground in concrete crypts, one stacked on top of another. Families would buy/rent two, four, or six such spaces and the entire monument was dedicated to the family. Once all the spaces were full, the next family member to die would be placed in one of the older spaces (and the remaining bones from that would be placed in a plastic bag and stuck next to the new casket--as weird as that sounds!). After a few years of letters and interviews, our Baha'i Community was ultimately successful in having the rules changed for the case of the Baha'is. This has set an interesting precident, I think, but time will tell.

Anyway, we now have a formal letter from the Municipality giving us the right to have Baha'i burials in the form specified in the Writings. (In a fine casket, underground and facing East, etc.)

The photos below show the SE corner area of the local cemetary which has been designated as a place where Baha'is can be buried in this manner. (Our LSA will be discussing how we will beautify this area soon.)