ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Weld, Maine, is a town of 376 people. And every year in late August, a group gets together for a party. Not just to sip wine and eat baked brie, but to get to know the people they hope will be their eternal neighbors. Grace Benninghoff has the story.
SEAN MINEAR: OK. Kelly (ph), what have you got? So your check...
GRACE BENNINGHOFF: Sean Minear's living room is full of people. But the conversation isn't about the upcoming school year or football season. It's about the small patch of land where they all will be buried.
MINEAR: Two sunken graves - found them with a mower. And they start sinking when you - so you goose the mower. One of them has gotten about 20...
BENNINGHOFF: That's Sean, sexton of the Mountain View Cemetery. Every August, he holds a party for those who've purchased plots there. Todd Papalagis and his late wife bought their plots about 30 years ago.
TODD PAPALAGIS: This party is basically an opportunity for all of us who own cemetery plots in Mountain View Cemetery to socialize with one another and just get a chance to meet your neighbors through eternity.
BENNINGHOFF: Papalagis is in his 60s, but people of all ages have plots in Mountain View. The youngest plot holder is 15 months old, the oldest, in her 90s. And people have different reasons for purchasing a spot there. Some like the look of the old country cemetery, others have ancestors buried there.
A plot for four at Mountain View is $300 for Weld residents and $600 for out-of-towners. The cemetery is lined with maple trees and a white, split-rail fence. The grass is mowed, but it's not manicured. Wildflowers and ferns spill from the edge of the thick forest around it.
(SOUNDBITE OF INSECTS CHIRPING)
BENNINGHOFF: Many people visit their plots throughout the year. Annie Agan said most Sunday mornings she sits on the stone that will mark her grave, drinks coffee and journals.
ANNIE AGAN: I study clouds 'cause I love to watercolor paint. So I usually just sometimes stretch out next to the stone and just look up at the sky. I don't even think about, this is where I'm going to be when I'm dead. It's just there.
BENNINGHOFF: Scott and Lisa Isherwood love the view from their future grave site.
LISA ISHERWOOD: It's beautiful.
SCOTT ISHERWOOD: You know?
BENNINGHOFF: From your plot?
L ISHERWOOD: Yeah.
S ISHERWOOD: From our plots. Yeah.
L ISHERWOOD: Yeah. It's a beautiful...
S ISHERWOOD: It's awesome.
L ISHERWOOD: We got a good view.
S ISHERWOOD: And, I - you know, I plan to spend eternity there with that view (laughter).
L ISHERWOOD: And we like the people...
S ISHERWOOD: Yeah.
L ISHERWOOD: ...We're going to be with.
S ISHERWOOD: Yeah.
L ISHERWOOD: And we know our neighbors.
BENNINGHOFF: Maybe it's the fun atmosphere of the party or the simplicity of the cemetery, but this particular group of people - many of them not yet 70 - seem to be comfortable talking about death, dying, being dead.
AGAN: There's a great big boulder which is my plot. But I'll have a little plaque on it, and it's going to say dirt to dirt (laughter).
BENNINGHOFF: So you'll be cremated?
AGAN: For sure.
BENNINGHOFF: Yeah.
AGAN: Yeah. Burn me up.
BENNINGHOFF: Mountain View, unlike most other cemeteries, has few rules about how people must be buried.
MINEAR: My grandfather is buried in his fishing tackle box. And my mother is buried in a cast-iron kettle that she grew flowers in. And my grandmother was buried in a basket, I believe. Families will make a wooden box and put that in and put their family member in that and bury it. It's up to them.
BENNINGHOFF: Maybe it's the relaxed rules. Maybe it's the party. Maybe it's the soft slope of the ground, where someday all these people will be eternal neighbors. But they want to be here forever.
For NPR News, I'm Grace Benninghoff.
(SOUNDBITE OF VITAMIN STRING QUARTET'S "LIVING DEAD GIRL") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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