{Backwards} Headstones Revisited (it's funny)

My sister's from Nephi, not originally, but the quaint and quirky city (village/town, by anyone else's standards) as become her adopted home town....It's also the place we chose to bury our Dad.

"We are going to have to drive "from heck to breakfast" to find it" ....WHAT did you just say, I asked her last weekend?!? You've never heard that before??? Nope, pretty sure its a Nephi, thang!....

That isn't the first time either...."We was at the rodeo last night..."   Nephi-speak is rather charming and funny all at the same time.

We spent two weeks in Nephi in April....

It reminded me much of our five years in Raymond, Alberta.

More quads (four-wheelers, in Utah speak) than vehicles

A gas station with more deer heads than, Slurpee flavours.

A funeral director that shows up in his western shirt, wranglers, and cowboy boots (he was awesome!)....

And a cemetery with almost all the headstones facing the wrong direction (kinda)....

Let me try to explain....(it took several times for me to get it myself)

The head of dad's grave is between the grey "Nielsen" stone and the large blank stone.

Okay so I've always thought of graves in a cemetery as "beds" with the head stone being the headboard....So when you stand at the foot of the grave , you can read the front of the headstone....


Well apparently not in Nephi....

When we buried Dad here, I couldn't figure it out.(Do they stack graves here??) The headstones are flipped backwards....still over the head the grave , but opposite from convention...

A dyslexic cemetery planner....nope just Nephi, and no other explanation is known or needed :)

Never seen this anywhere else. Just a quirky part of Nephi....Quirky just like Dad was.

............

So through an all-day game of phone and e-mail tag....Kelli and I finalized Dad's headstone....

A much simpler process this time. Within 30 mins the designer had a mock-up of something we were happy with....

Front, with a jazz, not rock drum kit and a little robin bird, cause I'm the favourite daughter....

The Bird....

The story for all the prudes among us: Dad loved nature....

The Real Story: Putting the middle finger on a headstone, is considered tacky, especially in Utah :) The designer told us they did it once and the cemetery made them take it off , later...
The middle finger was my Dad's most universal way of communication...it was rather endearing really. And just as much him as his blue eyes...so the  little bird, is really "the bird" ...

Back, Oh and Kelli and I without our last names just in case we get divorced (well you never know, and it has less awkwardness than sneaking into the cemetery late at night with a chisel and hammer :))


Dad made no excuses or apologies for who he was or how he lived...He was the pure definition of genuine...

I think we simply honoured him.

And yes his headstone will also be "backwards".