The dirt always felt heavy, even when it was just an idea.

Back in the Philippines, when I was twenty-six and my friends were spending their paychecks on night outs or savings for trips, I bought a funeral service. People thought it was strange—morbid, even, for a woman in her twenties to be negotiating with a mortician. But I looked at life like a ledger: the unexpected always happens, so why let it catch you empty-handed?

Years later, when my mother passed away, I didn’t have to scramble or panic through grief. I simply signed over the package I’d secured years prior. It gave her a peaceful, dignified departure, and in a quiet way, it felt like the best gift I had ever given her.

Now, decades later and thousands of miles away, I found myself sitting at another desk, holding a deed to a standard ground burial plot I had spent years paying off.

I looked down at the paper, then out the window toward the neatly trimmed grass of the memorial park. I’d spent my entire adult life renting. I never owned a house of my own—never had a place where I could paint the walls whatever color I wanted, or display my prized trinkets in a brightly lit cabinet by the front window.

Why would I spend eternity under six feet of dark earth when I never even owned the floorboards above ground?

“I want to make a change,” I told the advisor, sliding the paid-in-full deed across the desk. “I want to exchange the ground plot. I’ve decided on cremation, and I want a glass-front niche.”

The advisor raised an eyebrow slightly, then smiled with gentle curiosity. “A glass niche?”

“Yes,” I said, a soft smile catching on my lips. “A brightly lit one. Indoors.”

Within an hour, the paperwork was shifted, credit applied, and we walked down the marble hallway of the mausoleum. We stopped at a wall lined with clear glass compartments, each lit from within like tiny, peaceful rooms.

I stood in front of an empty shelf at eye level. It was clean, warm, and bright. In my mind, I could already see it: a beautifully crafted urn, a couple of small framed photographs of the places I loved, maybe a small token from my travels, and a soft light holding it all together.

I had never bought a house with a room of my own in life, but here, in the quiet beauty of this place, I was finally designing my forever home.

I ran my hand gently over the smooth glass. It was paid for, it was mine, and for the first time, thinking about the end didn’t feel like burden—it felt like coming home.

G.

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