Wilhelm’s Portland Memorial Funeral Home & Mausoleum

Memorial Day Weekend some friends and I decide to go for an urban hike. We head out to Oaks Bottom Wildlife refuge to do some bird watching right. Great beautiful sunny & hot holiday weekend. We do our hiking, check out the birds and we end up out by the Marsh/​Swamp/​Wetland and I look over and see my favorite Portland Mural, the Sellwood Mausoleum as I had come to call it, has had a facelift. I see how nice it looks all painted in blue with Heron’s and Egret’s and such and I admire it from a far until we are chased out by a swarm of flies. We head over to Dairy Queen for some nice tasty cool refreshing treats. I’m driving, as I planned of course, because my friends, well let’s just say they’re a boring. I tell them I want to show them some of the sites in Sellwood. So I take them for a little scenic tour over looking the Oaks Bottom refuge then I continue on down the road and drive right to the Mausoleum because after all I’m driving right. They didn’t take much coaxing and we found our way into the massive building complex. I cannot tell you how amazingly worth it it was to venture on into this place. Before I go any further though, a disclaimer: This is not a shopping mall nor a Chuckee Cheese. This is a sacred place and it should be respected as such, i.e. leave the kids at home and don’t act like an escaped Orangutan, and just don’t piss off the dead okay. Now with that said you should just roam around and see the beauty in this place, the names and dates of all the people resting here. Play a name game, or do like we did and try to find the oldest person there. There are like SEVEN floors Man! They have a super cool fountain that you can see from above at every floor and see from below underneath it. Now don’t forget to plant yourself at one of the many many windows overseeing the city and the refuge below. If you bring binoculars, please be discreet about it. When I was there I was just so blown away by how different each section on each floor is different from the other and some beautiful Art to take in as well. Enjoy yourself here and relax, meditate, contemplate but remember to have respect for those resting around you.
On your way if you enjoyed your visit then please make a donation because I can only imagine the expense of the upkeep on such a large facility. Oh yeah and check out the sweet pond and waterfall outside too. It’s just a nice place to chill out for a while.
Enjoy