After an enjoyable and educational day with Marsha (AlwaysWrite), Jodie (Jodie’s Touch of Style), Jodie’s husband (and photographer), and Leslie, one of her models, Marsha and I planned a museum trip for Friday morning before I headed home. Dicovering the museum was closed (opening, naturally, the next day), we changed direction, heading for the IOOF cemetery. What’s that you might ask? I guessed it meant International Order of Odd Fellows. Almost. The “I” stands for “Independent” rather than “International.” But cemetery it was either way and I do enjoy browsing through cemeteries, especially older ones where there are interesting headstones. Here are a few that caught my eye.
I’d guess that Petra was Catholic as this is a very Catholic headstone. You’ll see more of this type of presentation in European cemeteries.
I found H.C. Tyler’s stone intriguing. Was it made this way or did some part break off? Perhaps H.C. was a lover of rocks and stones. OK, probably not but you have to admit it’s not the usual, either in stone or lettering.
Marsha warned me that the cemetery wasn’t well-kept and unfortunately, she was right. Here’s an excellent example of that. Someone spent a lot of money on a beautiful mosaic remembrance and not only was it breaking up, it was covered with branches and dead leaves.
You can see from the inscription and the choice of a headstone that wasn’t the usual bland stone that Allie was indeed beloved.
As we walked back to the parking area, a small grave caught my eye. Even though it looks big here, it was at most a yard in length, not very wide, and almost hidden by bushes and the tree. Reading the inscription (following photo) tugged at my heart.
How difficult to buy a son less than two when he passed away! We have an almost 10-month old grandson now and I can’t imagine the grief we and his parents would feel were this to happen. If you have children or grandchildren, give them a hug if you can, send a text filled with love, call to tell them your love them, and thank God that you can.
We didn’t have a dessert after this but we did have an excellent lunch with Marsha’s husband, after which I drove back home. It had been a thoroughly enjoyable weekend. We were missing a couple of blogging friends, Lisa from Micro of the Macro and Donna of Wind Kisses. I did however have coffee and lunch with Donna on my way up, always a wonderful time.
Jo’s Monday Walk 1.16.23
This, that and the other thing 