Notes from the Living on Respecting the Dead

On a hot summer afternoon in Los Angeles this past August — the kind of day where you can feel the crisp California sunshine searing right into your skin — I decided to make a detour. I was leaving Doheny Memorial Library at USC, where I had spent the morning and afternoon looking through clippings and photos of Anna May Wong from the Los Angeles Examiner archives, and I had a little bit of time to kill before a drinks date with a writer friend in East Hollywood. I got in my car and set the GPS on my phone to the <a href="https://youtu.be/gPLWAZaYKg4" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Angelus Rosedale Cemetery</a>, Anna May Wong’s final resting place. I had often thought about going to pay my respects to the woman I have devoted so much time and psychic energy to. I’d heard stories about obsessed fans who arrived weekly to sweep and take care of her gravestone. I imagined, similarly, arriving with a bouquet of flowers, incense, and a platter of fruit as an offering to her honored spirit. But I hadn’t planned ahead and didn’t have time to stop and pick something up. Better to visit her than not at all, I reasoned, and swallowed the fact that I’d have to show up empty-handed. <a href="https://katiegeesalisbury.medium.com/notes-from-the-living-on-respecting-the-dead-c010f7b81885">Read More</a>