In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

55 Colma. A city of crypts. It buries the dead of San Francisco, which prohibits graveyards within its limits (the only exceptions are the national cemetery in the Presidio and the tiny walled garden within Mission Dolores, featured in Hitchcock’s Vertigo). Joel drove past, and sometimes through, the necropolis-city on his commute to teach in South San Francisco: “This morning , I flipped an illegal U-turn in avoidance of a half-hour fight for the on-ramp and drove through Colma, death’s acres, on my alternate way to work. One of the cemeteries struck me as remarkable. The markers are set flat in the ground, and flowers, presumably placed on graves, look like wind-strewn clumps of garbage. There was one person visiting the place and it was striking how incongruous any but a ragged, dusty being looks there. There’s no imagined scent of a widow’s perfume.”17 This alternate way to work was probably via El Camino Real, which would have taken him through Colma’s Woodlawn Memorial Park, where he was ultimately interred in the Rose Garden, and where his secrets came to rest. No generations of family gathered for the occasion, no friends to tell stories of outlandish pranks, there was no grand hurrah, no memorial service, no viewing, no scattering of ashes, no widow scented by perfume. 17 Letter, June 9, 1990. ...

Share