Lake View Cemetery - 3

Sometimes we find a gem amongst the chaff (a mixed metaphor is the best I can do today) such as the one above. It is rare to find a Hungarian flag on a gravestone and even rarer to find one that tell you the avocation of each of the interred.



Something I noted in the photos of the last cemetery is the unusual trees one can find in Seattle cemeteries. This one, with its dark twisted trunk and thick foliage above seems to be a misshapen umbrella providing shelter to the local residents. In Seattle, even the dead seek shelter from the rain.

Here is a fellow that was quite proud of his lodge memberships.

John and Anna Hauberg have a most interesting design on their marker. It seems to be based on Native American designs although "Hauberg" certainly doesn't sound Native American.

This simple stone is only roughly carved. From a distance, it appears to be well done, but on closer inspection, you find the cuts to be more suggestive and literal.

We now come to the centerpiece of the cemetery: the graves of Bruce Lee and his son Brandon. Brandon has a nice inscription on his marker which says:

"Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."

For Brandon and Eliza
Ever Joined in True Love's Beauty

He was killed at age 28 by an accident on the set of "The Crow" in which he was staring. It seems that

A week before the scheduled end of production, they were running behind schedule, and it was decided that dummy rounds used in the firearms would be made from real cartridges. On the third take of the evening, the cameras began to roll and Lee entered the scene in progress, he was shot at as scripted. Lee fell backwards against a door and collapsed. It was then discovered that he was bleeding from the abdomen and slipping into shock. An ambulance was called. At the hospital, five hours of surgery was unable to save the actor's life. A fragment of a dummy bullet had apparently been lodged in the barrel of the gun, and the blank charge, when fired, propelled the fragment into Lee's abdomen where it lodged near his spine.

From the hillside where the Lees are buried, we can look back to the northeast and see Lake Washington distance and Portage Bay closer in. it is a nice park-like place, well kept and pleasant to wander.

Like many other graves here, this one is marked with the country of birth for the resident. This is a place of immigrants.

I have, quite frankly, never seen this sort of thing before on any continent. It seems a bit shocking to advertise in the cemetery just as you would on a billboard along the highway.

We were not alone here, however. This rabbit watched us as we drove past and I paused to get a photo the car window. I'm guessing that this is a nice, safe place to live as a rabbit.