I was walking around on Wash U’s campus a while back – I don’t remember where, exactly – when I looked down and noticed that I was walking over bricks that had been “donated” by folks who had given money to WU. This is standard practice a lot of places: donate $$$, get a brick with a message on it written by you.
As I walked, I was struck by the idea that many of the bricks were dedicated to people who had died. Further, one day all of the people listed on those bricks would be dead. Although it was a macabre thought, I realized that this was a walkway of the dead.