For decades, Columbia Funeral Home & Crematory greeted drivers, passengers, pedestrians as they entered Columbia City. The neon sign, “Columbia Funeral Home,” fixed on the side of the roof that faced Rainier Avenue, stood out against the old building, built in 1906, which was by all standards unremarkable: barrel tiles, dormers, veranda, clapboard siding. The sign, on the other hand, was shamelessly splashy and, at night, it seemed to float in the darkened air.
The sign was everything. It welcomed you to this old city with a feeling captured by these words: “Have a good time here, with the living. But before entering, please remember the dead. We are no longer in space and time, but we exist in your memories. Think of us.”
A city is truly lost when it forgets its dead…