You would think there would be more graveyards in the guide. They seem to fit the vibe and famous graves do make a lot of the more skewed-from-traditional roadside itineraries. Pretty or creepy gravestones. Celebrity resting places. Loci for regional urban legends. There’s a draw, sure, but most just don’t have a lot going on.
And they don’t usually have bathrooms.
‘The Rose Garden’ makes the cut for its being contentious, though the conceit does it some favors. The gist is that some long-dead rich man lost his daughter, ‘Rose,’ and developed such a grand resting place that he thought it should be shared. The form of this largesse, was such that he worked with local lawmakers to mandate that all further Roses and Rosalines meeting their end on county soil be interred in ‘The Garden.’ It wasn’t a lot, but over the years, ‘The Rose Garden’ has grown.
‘Nobody’s arguing that it’s not a nice place. For a rural cemetery, ‘The Rose Garden’ is ritzy up to the point of bad taste. It’s been renovated several times, more recently with touches in gold and glossy red enamel that are meant to evoke velvet furniture but land, instead, on laminate diner booth.
And there are rosebushes, of course.
The money set aside for upkeep of ‘The Rose Garden’ has been invested in several strains of the flower that bloom in the winter. The cemetery is red, even after a snowfall, and this tends to have a negative effect on the human psyche. Red like a rash. Red like something that wants you to know its venomous. Red like blood under the surface of the skin, which may be the most painful image to manifest in those who come to grieve the long dead.’
There is a dead Rose in the county now, her body in limbo. It’s became a national story as soon as the government seized her and the family threatened to dig her up if she’s not placed in the family plot out of state. The burial is scheduled and ‘The Rose Garden’ is set to be off limits in the days to come, preventing sabotage and protest, so my visit is hurried. The other visitors seem angry, like they want to break something but understand that the grounds are sacred despite themselves- that some people have been buried here willingly.
I’d say there’s a 30% chance that by the end of this, someone else will be dead.
-traveler
