Four more ties bind us to heaven...

...four more links are broken here.

This is the month in which my family can count as four the number called home; Grandma Mary Jane and Aunt Mary Lou, (1968) Sister Audrey, (1992) and Great Uncle Jess, (1998).

My Grandpa Lloyd always used to remark that if he had to chose a time of the year to "go home" as he put it, he guessed that September would be the best month of them all. Next to June, he considered it to be the loveliest of months and I would have to agree with him.

In the Midwest, September still holds a gentle warmth but with just a teasing hint of crisp and cool. The shadows lengthen, the leaves start to turn, the sky takes on a certain shade of...oh, I don;t know what you'd call that color blue but it's just a blue that is unique to that time of the year.

Yes, if one had to close their eyes to this world, September in Iowa might just be the best time if not for you then certainly for those left behind to attend the funeral. Harvest hasn't started yet so you're sure to get a good crowd. The weather is perfect for standing outside on the hill under the open sky. No spitting rain mixed with snow, no river to come up and flood the road and turn the place to mush. Just the sun and the turning fields.

I have often wondered if my sister's monument has posed a little mystery for the Grave yard fans of South Eastern Iowa. Back in the early '90's, hers was one of a kind and one of the first "portrait" markers to make an appearance in the Winfield cemetery.

(The last I was ever there, 2004, I was glad to note that we had started a trend so to speak)

Anyone who can do simple math can figure that Audrey was 34 at the time of her death and yet, the picture on the marker would lead one to believe that she was a little girl. What gives, right?

The fact is that in many ways, sister was a little girl. She never got that tall, she never seemed to age much. At 34, she could still pass for her teens. Audrey spent the majority of her life, 33 years in fact, severely handicapped. She died of complications from pneumonia from a bad flu bug that some well meaning visitor had brought into the nursing home the month before.

When it came time to create her monument, my Mother wanted something that was a stand out, something that would last, something that people would stop and gaze at and wonder. I would say that between her and the designer in Burlington, IA, they did a heck of a job.

Unlike most of the stones in that cemetery which are all facing west into town, the ones for my branch of the family are facing one another. Some are facing west and some, like Audrey's, face east.

(I forget Granpa's reasoning behind this set up but it suits us very well for we appear to be sitting down at the big dinning room table, starting with the oldest to the youngest. Should Mother Marie, a devote Seventh Day Adventist be correct in that the dead in Christ shall rise first, we Chrisingers will have nothing to see but one another when the trump shall sound)

At any rate, there is a spot next to Audrey which is mine. Yes, I have laid on it, even danced on it just to say that I could and did in fact dance on my grave. Someday I should love for a huge and somewhat terrifying angel to sprout up in that place with spread out wings and an unsheathed sword. Oh, how I should love to even start the rumors behind the armed angel of the Chrisingers if only to give the future grave yard rabbits a little mystery to figure out!

Maud is gone, but not forgotten

So ran the epitaph on my first favorite monument in my first ever cemetery.

Ah, the little cemetery on the edge of the small Midwest town where I came from. Up to that fateful day in May 1970 I had no clue that such places existed. Once I found out about them, I couldn't get enough!

For my Mother, this place was a God-send of tranquility. She could sit in the car and write whilest I wandered along the headstones, drinking in the drama of small town life late 19th century style.

What possible reason could have led the town doctor to construct the one and only mausoleum in the place, grace the door with his name and dates and then, as if an after thought, add the words

"...and his wife."

That's it. That's all she got; "and his wife."

How was it that some folks had only the funeral home provided temp markers to label their final known address? The early ones were constructed of cheap metal with tin letters and numbers. The oldest one I ever found dated to the 1910's.

I wonder if it is still there, bravely battling the Midwest elements or if a mowing machine has taken it out?

The number of short graves in that cemetery were considerable. Late summer and late winter seemed to be the worst times of the year for babies and toddlers. A cluster of death dates within the same month spoke of an epidemic that swept through the region. Whooping cough? Diphtheria?

Sometimes a family would lose their children within days of one another as shown above. George died first on December 7, 1888. His sister Fannie followed him 2 weeks later on December 20.

So what caused little Maud to join the "silent city on the hill" nearly 10 years later in 1896? She was four years old that October. A late season round of whooping cough? An accident on the family farm perhaps? Her stone offers no explanation beyond the promise that while she was now absent from the family circle, she was "not forgotten."

Over 100 years later, she is still not forgotten. I've carried her memory for nigh 40 years. And now, so can you.

New Year, New Blog

No, I am not Jewish...I simply subscribe to the notion that Fall would be a better place to begin a new year as opposed to the dead of winter.

There's something about the crisp and cooling air of Autumn that calls me to straighten the house, clean out the drawers and the closets and clean out my head while I'm at it. This is the season where I begin new diets, new jobs and...new blogs!

Fall is also a PRIME season for going on a good cemetery crawl which brings us to the purpose of this online journal. I am a cemetery groupie from way back. Over the years, I have visited a lot of cemeteries and have taken oodles of pictures. Why leave them to molder in a box in the storage room when I can share them here!

In addition to posting the old pictures, I will try each week to visit and record my impressions of some of the best stone gardens the area has to offer and share them here.

Enjoy!