Where will you be buried? This is a taboo subject in America for almost anyone, regardless of age. You are better off talking about money, politics, sex or religion. The worst thing you can do is remind an American of his or her own mortality. When you ask this, Americans look aghast and offended, as if you had the audacity to suggest that one day they might die, or even sillier, as if you wish them dead. The fact is we all will die one day. And in this one simple question is our culture’s salvation. A person at peace with dying is a person at peace with living. A person who can say where they are going when they die has a sense of roots, or a place in this world. Anyone who can answer that question unabashedly will not likely die alone. The place where they are going to be buried is the place where they belong.

If you have lived in Olivenhain your whole life, then chances are you can answer this question from the time you are born. You know where you belong. You know where you will go when you die. And better yet, you know that you will be surrounded, in death as in life, by people who loved you and will continue to care for you in perpetuity. The Olivenhain Cemetery is a pioneer cemetery, and, like the pioneers, is quiet and taciturn with a simple, un-sensational story. There are no ghosts here; just tight-lipped farmers buried solidly in the ground that they worked all of their living days. There are no tabloid stories; they didn’t talk in life and they don’t talk in death. Their story belongs to them and their descendents alone. In fact, you can’t even be buried here unless you are a descendent of or related by marriage to a pioneer of Colony Olivenhain, or if the Olivenhain Cemetery Council, made up of seven solid members of the community, makes a rare exception.

The Cemetery Council is a non-profit corporation, founded in 1971 by Harley Denk, which exists on donations alone. Denk, whose family is part of the original German settlers of Colony Olivenhain explains, “The cemetery was owned by my grandfather and Wiro, and it came down to my dad, Bruno Denk and Charlie Wiro, from there to myself Harley Denk and Bob Wiro. And Bob left this area [to move] to Bryce and I figured that there could be a problem so I formed the Olivenhain Cemetery Council, a non-profit corporation and the ownership went to directors of the corporation. It worked out great in that [when] Bob died the cemetery was okay, otherwise it could have gone through a lot of litigation.”

Mary Beth Hayashi is the chairperson of the Olivenhain Cemetery Council. Harley Denk is her father. She is the great-granddaughter of Amelie Hauck, the first pioneer buried here in 1891. The Denks owned half of the original five acre cemetery plot, along with the Wiro family. Now the cemetery is approximately 1.9 acres. The Denk family plot takes up the southernmost half, under some old pepper trees. Hayashi speaks about the first few graves put into the cemetery, “[My] great grandmother is buried here. [Amelie Hauck] She is my descendent to be here. [It’s the] only grave here that’s pointed north. It just does. Nobody knows why.” She points to a grave marked “Alwina Hauck—May 1895” and says, “That was my great-grandfather’s wife that he brought here with him. He remarried and she died in childbirth with my grandmother.”

The Olivenhain Cemetery landscape is dry, scrubby and tough but in spring is full of wildflowers and beautiful. The tombstones are unfussy and get the job done. There is no irrigation, aside from what nature brings. No grass. No parking unless you count the weeded, dry lot to the north of the big log. You won’t see a uniformed, detached employee having a smoke break atop a tombstone in between mowing and weeding. In fact, at Olivenhain there are yearly clean ups, where the living ancestors of the dead get out the clippers. Hayashi says, “We have a cemetery clean up once a year with the people in the area and some people come from Colorado and Arizona because their family is here and it makes a good time to visit with the family, too. We get together and clean and take care of our own area and then go to other people’s that haven’t been cleaned lately.”

There is something so natural and organic about this place because it lacks that creepy, too-perfect graveyard feeling. Today’s public cemetery seems so sinister with its neat rows of identical tombstones and perfectly manicured lawns. It’s as if we want to hide the gravesite so it looks like a park. Maybe then nobody will notice that there are dead people there. The skeletons in our closet are actual skeletons. At Olivenhain Cemetery, there are no skeletons in the closet. There is no closet. They keep the dead buried firmly six feet underground. In fact, they bury their dead themselves. Denk says, “The first burials here were dug by hand. And this is a very hard kind of sandstone. At first it took several people a whole day to dig a grave. We dug it six feet deep. The reason why we went six feet deep is so that you could put a body on top if you needed to later on, which we’ve never needed to, except with cremations. Later on, we brought in an air spade, and that would take a half a day. And now, you can dig the grave with a back hoe in about a half an hour.”

Bob Hough is memorial specialist at El Camino Memorial on Melrose Street in Encinitas. El Camino Memorial has been at that location since 1946. Before that, it was Encinitas Memorial and was located on Second Street in downtown. Hough thinks there is something very therapeutic about all of the digging. “I did a service out there. [The deceased’s] son was going to bring the [digging] equipment to the grave. From my perspective, that’s one of the healthiest things that can happen…He’s able to do something. During those first few days following a person’s death, everybody wants to do something and nobody knows what to do, so there’s a pretty high level of anxiety. This particular person had something to do. He could help his father in a very tangible way. He was surrounded by family and loved ones. [They had] this final expression of respect and love and affection and commemoration of his father. He also knows that when that moment comes in his life, he’s going to be buried by [those that love him.] I think that is a connection that the majority of America has lost today.”

There are 205 graves in the Olivenhain Cemetery, possibly one or two more at the printing of this story. Harley Denk knows personally or knows of, he asserts, about 90 percent of them. The names among the tombstones are Denk, Bumann, Wiro, Lux, Weigand, Scott, Teten, Cole and Reseck, all names you might recognize in our local schools, roads and shopping centers. They all made a living from this unyielding land together. Their children married one another; they helped one another in hard times. Their lives have been entwined for over 100 years. Here, they are joined in death. And they continue to unite their descendents.

At Olivenhain Cemetery, nobody dies alone. Hough tells a story of Mother Theresa and how she made it her life’s goal that the poor of Calcutta would not die alone. As he states, “She recognized that life and death are viewed much differently in India than they are here in America. And beggars would die in the streets there in the gutters. She said that the turning point for her was the one day she came across a dying beggar in the gutter and tried to comfort him…she gave him a drink of water… She decided at that point no person should die alone. It’s sad today when people don’t have a support system. It’s troubling to me personally…that when people die and there’s no remembrance of their life…it’s as though they hadn’t been here. The people in Olivenhain address that very, very effectively and that doesn’t happen for them.”

When questioned about the particulars of who would drive the tractor, Hayashi answers serenely, “Oh, there’s still a few people that know how to run them.” The answer to the question, ‘Where will you be buried?’ for early citizens of Olivenhain, is here. You will be buried here. Don’t worry about the details. Someone you know and love will take care of you when you die. At Olivenhain Cemetery we take care of our own. •