Taphophile Tragics


During our vacation we visited, among others, the Oaklawn Cemetery in Sparta, Tennessee. It was next to the highway and we decided to have a look. It was a small cemetery with mostly small gravestones lying in the grass with flowers next to them. See photo below:

Oaklawn Cemetery

There was another section in this cemetery where people were buried with gravestones that were standing upright. Among these graves I stumbled upon a very touching grave, actually two graves:

The gravestones read the following from left to right:
Below the drawing it reads: Here comes the new greeter at the gate Chance Jordan Milton, always loving, always loved, Sept 5, 1985 - June 3, 2007. Absent from the body, present with the Lord.
Below the drawing it reads: Go rest high on that mountain. Wynn Heath Milton, we love you always, Sept 8, 1981 - Sept 21, 2007. Life is not forever, Love is.
What struck me the most was that these two young men are brothers. And for some reason they both died during a three month period. Another thing that got my attention was the amount of details engraved in their gravestones.  Chance's stone had a drawing of the gate to heaven and a portrait of Chance in a golf cart. Wynn had a drawing on his stone wich included a portrait of Wynn with the woods an mountains behind him. Further more there were a lot of photos of these men, that certainly attracts my attention, because I always wonder what people looked like during their life.


The backside of these gravestones were also quite impressive, engraved with multiple portraits and more text. These brothers were very much loved and their parents made sure that shows from their graves.

The basketball net was on the vast next to Wynn's gravestone.  The inscription 'Tennessee school for the deaf' belonged to
Chance's gravestone.

This walkmans, a real one and one engraved in the vase, were next to Chance's grave.

I had hoped to find information on the internet about the tragic behind this story. The only thing I could find was an obituary for Wynn Heath Milton: Wynn died at White County Hospital, he was preceded in death by his brother Chance Jordan Milton and that memorial donations may be made to the American Cancer Society in memory of his brother Chance. So this makes me believe that Chance died of cancer, but it doesn't tell me why or how his brother also died. Anyhow, I think this is incredibly sad, whatever the story behind this may be. Their parents must be devastated.

For more interesting stories and photos go to Julie's Taphophile Tragics.

  

Home sweet home


And we are back home again, what a great trip we had! In three weeks we drove from New York City to New Orleans and back to the City again. I have many, many photos from our trip, so you might see one or two pop up here on my blog. Today I have a photo that I made yesterday evening on Columbus Avenue, while walking over to the movie theatre. While we were away summer also arrived in NYC, it is hot and humid, a good time to sit in a cool theater and watch a movie.


By the way, today we celebrate Memorial Day, this is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.

Columbus Avenue, NYC
Photo made on my iPhone, processed with Snapseed.

Road trip day 21


Our first three hours of driving were OK, but then Memorial-Day-Weekend-traffic joined us.... Busy, busy, busy. Accident here, accident there, traffic jam, more traffic jams. Eventually we saw a bunch of motels along the road and we booked ourselves a room for the night. So, here we are in Laurel, Maryland only 200 miles from home, but this way it will be a short drive tomorrow. 

This great truck with cat-eyes stood in front of us in one of the traffic jams, I think this is really cool!

Road trip day 20


Today another day of driving: from Kingsland, Georgia to Selma, North Carolina. Haven't seen much today, other than the Interstate-95, rest area's, Ruby Tuesday for lunch and our hotel for the night. So today another photo from the road trip archive. This photo was taken in Memphis, Tennessee from the rooftop of our hotel. The river between the buildings and the sun is the Mississippi river.

For more skies from around the world head over to Skywatch Friday

Road trip day 19


Driving, driving and driving, that's what we did today. From Panama City Beach, Florida to Kingsland in Georgia. I didn't make a single photo today. But I have made a lot of photos in the past weeks, so here's one that I took in Nashville, TN at the former plantation home (The Hermitage) of Andrew Jackson. The Hermitage is now a museum, but once home to former president Andrew Jackson. He owned slaves, who of course worked for him and who also lived on the grounds. You get to see his mansion (most of the interior is still original) the grounds, the family graves, Alfred's cabin (the last remaining slave cabin) etc. It was really a very interesting museum!

This photo is, as I said, from the grounds of the Hermitage, overlooking the (now) empty fields, but once very lucrative cotton fields.

The Hermitage

Road trip day 18

We are enjoying the nice weather in Florida at the moment. Nice beaches, sunshine all day long and temperatures in the 80's Fahrenheit (30ºC +). Sunday night we slept in a hotel in Pensacola Beach. Yesterday we drove to Panama City Beach and we are staying in a great beach condo right along the Gulf of Mexico. Wikipedia tells me that Panama City Beach's slogan is: "The world's most beautiful beaches" due to the sugar-white sandy beaches. And they are white, I have never seen such white beaches before, it is really beautiful here. Unfortunately we must make our way back to New York in the next few days. That means a lot of driving and no more beaches for us. Ah well, all good comes to an end, right?

Gulf of Mexico

see-through-umbrella next to the swimming pool

Road trip day 16


We spend the weekend in New Orleans. What a great city. This was my first time visiting the city, but I definitely will go back some other time. We didn't have enough time to visit all the places we wanted. 
One of the things we did see was Sydney & Walda Besthoff Sculpture Garden next to the Museum of Art. Wow, that is really a great garden to walk around in, so many beautiful and unique sculptures. I liked the ones below the most.

Sculpture by Fernando Botero
(Back home in New York I very often see another sculpture by Botero in the mall, many people like to pose next to it for photos, but that's got a lot to do with the sculpture's genitals, the NY Times has an nice article about that)

Artist: Leandro Erlich, Argentinean, born 1973
Title: Window and Ladder. Too Late for Help.