Pere Lachaise is the largest cemetery in Paris. All sorts of famous, rich and not so famous nor quite so rich (but there has to be at least a little money put by because word on the street is it's not cheap to keep a place in this chez) people and whole families have come here for a final repose as it were. The result is a rather peaceful and strangely charming (maybe not the right mot, but it alludes me in both French and English) sort of neighborhood (all of the tombs are the above ground variety. Vous savez, the kind that look like houses/Grecian temples/Gothic Cathedrals). But as I strolled the cobblestone paths and climbed the hills of this neighborhood, I wondered at all the ways the living try to immortalize and honor the dead. I found a few:
Sometimes a man's life's work becomes sculpting the most comforting and beautiful image he can think of, to remind himself after his wife has died that he and she are not alone as they face the uncertainties that lay beyond.

Sometimes we show the essence of a person by immortalizing what they loved or did best.

Or we may give our favorite or even the writer we're just mildly attached to a kiss with a shade of lipstick called "Earnestly Read".
Perhaps we place a stone at the base of a memorial for something that cannot bear remembering but can never be forgotten. A beautiful symbol of experience and eternity.
Or you can be like me and after you've paid respects, you do the very natural, very human thing. You have a tranche de mailleoux among the memorials and graves. Here's to me and here's to you, you might say, raising the cake to those around you. Then enjoy the taste of chocolate, I'm sure they did.