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01/20/2004: "Death Central"

We went out into the snow yesterday to mark out the grave site. The cemetery was surveyed decades ago and marble markers were placed in the northeast corner of each plot, and each plot, consisting of eight graves, is twenty feet by eighteen. Under inches of snow, overgrown by grass, are the two-inch markers with plot numbers. Find one. Unreel tape measure to twenty feet. Poke around with a pitchfork, and hope that the frozen ground and random stones ring differently than the markers. One was under a bush, but eventually we found them all. Plot 96, grave 2. His wife died a few years ago, of ALS. He'd had pneumonia, but seemed to be doing fine, but then he sat down in his chair to rest, and the rest will be eternal.