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Monday, May 31, 2004

Back in Michigan we would go out to the cemeteries in the spring time to pick up trash, cut back last year's flowers, and put some new geraniums or petunias on the graves. We went to the cemetery where my grandfather Harold was buried in 1972, great grandparents Colonel (1974) and Maybelle (1951), and Maybelle's parents Anna and Isaac were hidden beneath the ground. The tombstones were mostly red granite and a small amount of moss and lichen has grown into lines of the carved letters and numbers. Around many of the graves are hens and chickens, a small succulent that I have tried to grow here in Arizona with no success.

Another cemetery nearby holds my great-great-great grandparents Ebenezer and Harriet. He was a Civil War soldier so a small flag holder has a flag today. Their son Frank lies nearby, he was killed in a logging mill accident in August 1883. A letter in Ebenezer's pension file at the National Archives says "I had my youngest son killed he was my support when he went all hopes went with him." Two separate branches of the family preserved a story of how Harriet, who was 68 when her son died, slept on his grave for two weeks- the story said she carried a shotgun to scare away grave robbers. I suspect she was grieving for her youngest child. His tombstone stands today and you have to dig the sandy soil away to read the short poem inscribed below his name.

"We loved him

We missed him

We wanted him to stay

But God sent his Angels

And took him away"


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