Recently I made a quick trip to a dollar store in my town, thinking they would have microwave popcorn in single-serving bags. They didn’t, so I decided to walk over to the large grocery store in the same shopping center. I’ve been to this particular shopping center hundreds of times in the last three years, so you can imagine how surprised I was when I rounded the corner and saw a tiny cemetery.

I don’t know how I managed to miss it all this time. I suppose I don’t shop at the Fashion Bug, which is the store it’s closest to. And I usually don’t walk in that direction from the dollar store. But still…a cemetery! Right there, in the strip mall!

There was a wrought-iron fence around the plot, and on two sides rosebushes were planted all along the fence. There were two trees growing in one corner of the square. It was a lovely, peaceful place, as cemeteries often are. I spied a gate on the other side of the fence, and it was unlocked so I let myself in.

Most of the headstones are very weathered, some of them worn almost completely smooth by time and the elements, some of them broken and almost buried under the grass. Others are still readable, and from those it’s clear that this was a family cemetery.

I wondered, as I brushed my fingers over the carved names and took photos, if any Hammett relatives ever visit to pay their respects. Or maybe when they sold the land to the developers and added the clause that the family graves had to be left intact, they felt they’d done their best to honor their ancestors and never looked back. Maybe it’s just too weird to think of your great-great-great grandfather being laid to rest in a shopping-center parking lot.

I lingered a while longer, trying to read the faded headstones, smiling at the absurdity of life. Then I put away my camera, latched the gate carefully behind me, and headed over to the grocery store.

For the whole set, go to Strip-mall cemetery - a photoset on Flickr