Charon's Map

Spring has finally sprung in Northeast Ohio. I've already mowed grass twice and it really needs it again. The patio furniture is cleaned and the umbrella is in its perch. Hell, I've even killed my first batch of ants foraging in my kitchen -- it must be spring!

I recently finished a web project I've been working on for more than a year. I hope to have it online before Memorial Day, as it was originally intended in 2006. This might seem a tad... morose, but bear with me.

I'm usually not much for paying my respects to the dead. I've visited the gravesites of my friends Mark and Sean sporadically over the years, as well as those of my grandparents. But it's always kind of an ordeal. I can never remember exactly where they are buried and then I have to tromp around cemeteries, looking at headstones and hoping I'm even in the right section.

I made a concerted effort to get better at this back in Spring, 2005. It had been so long since my last visit to the graves of my grandparents (buried in different cemeteries with their respective previous spouses) that I actually had to stop at the offices and get maps. The folks in both places were very helpful and as I started to gather this documentation, an idea germinated. To avoid having to go through all that again, I should scan the documents, take some photos and create an online guide to where my friends and family reside in perpetuity.

See, told ya, morose, right?

I kept the documents, made some notes on where Mark and Sean are buried and promptly forgot about the whole thing. Then in September of that same year, my mother passed away and I had another reason to think about commemorating the dead. So last Memorial Day, I bought fake flowers for all the people who have passed through my life and left an indelible impression and set out to record their burial places and monuments. They are scattered around five different cemeteries in four different communities. But I have them all.

My brother and I recently had a headstone set for my mother and new vases installed on her grave and on my grandmother's grave as well. It seemed like the right time to create the web pages and upload them, linked through my personal website. The pages are done, though I used Microsoft software to create them, so I need to go into the HTML and strip out all the superfluous "dirty" code before posting.

I'm calling the group of pages Charon's Map, an homage to my love of Greek mythology. Charon ferried the souls of the dead (who could pay the fare, the reason Greeks were buried with coins on their eyes) down Acheron (the river of woe), then down the Cocytus (the river of lamentation), into the Lethe (the river of forgetfulness), through the Phlegethon (the river of fire) and on to the Styx (the river of hate) to arrive at the gates of the underworld, where they were greeted by Cerberus, the three-headed Hound of Hell. (If any of this sounds familiar, rock bands, television and films have been borrowing this imagery for many years.)

So what do you think, dear reader? Is this too somber, too obsessive? Should the dead be left in the ground and forgotten, their lives commemorated through the memories of their days in the sunshine?