Here’s what you do when the funeral home director catches you (all pulsing earbuds and flying feet). Cry. Immediately. This is the price of admission: tears poised like actors awaiting their cue. Say: “I come here to be close to my father.” No matter your father was cremated. No matter the director is already shaking his head. This is no Lakefront Trail with its double strollers and kamikaze cyclists. This is 350 acres of existential fodder: lonely angels and etched surnames; angry geese and fallen trees amidst aisles of silent stone. You run here because segregating the dead does nothing to honor them. Because respecting a rule’s spirit doesn’t mean you have to obey.
