To pause in graveyard and weep at this

[BellaMagnificat]

Saddest I saw was this (witholding the family name)

In loving memory

Harold 1893-1896

Samuel 1904-1905

Wilfred 1897-1916 Killed in action

Ethel 1891-1917

Mabel 1893-1923

Nora 1900-1929

How utterly cruel. How did the families ever get past it?

That's how it was in those days. Happened in my family too. Do you really weep over a gravestone listing people who died 80+ years ago unless they were your family? Were they your family?

Tears came to my eyes and spilled over.

I wasn't sobbing.

I know this is how it was with multiple infant mortality.

What made me especially sad was this set of circumstances.

Young children lost, a son lost in the war and then the girls in the 20s and 30s.

I rather wish I had not had to explain all that.

but they all died at different times?

it was obviously a family plot.
and families were bigger then

graveyards are not particularly good places to go

YANBU. There's a gravestone in our local churchyard which says 'Elizabeth. 1900-1929 A sorrow to deep for words.' I get a lump in my throat every time I pass it.

Well that seems quite indicative of the time, and a family plot.....

What do you really expect to find in a graveyard

You vipers salmotrutta and slarty

The OP was connecting with the past and feeling it.

As a byproduct of a hobby I used to have, I've done quite a bit of gravestone reading (sounds a bit woo ) they can be 'interesting'.

There's one in our local churchyard that you can read from the road, and it's got a poem to the bloke in the grave about how he was lost at sea.

Very sad.

inappropriate place but never mind

i see they were all young now. tis sad. i agree. i dont tend to walk through graveyards, they are interesting but mostly sad.

YANBU

I am touched by headstones too. Particularly poignant ones.

I am morbid and deppressive sensitive.

Yes, of course families 'were bigger then.'

Do you imagine it therefore hurt rather less?

Graveyards can be very peaceful and contemplative places. I am not saying I was devastated. I am empathising (and unwisely mixing that with some considerable knowledge as a social historian ) with what a few names and dates can reveal about a family and their circumstances.

My point is not simply the string of deaths - that can be seen in any victorian churchyard sadly.

It's this set of circumstances! - can't you see?

DS1 and I used to walk through a graveyard (don't do it now as DS2 would have to come and he's too noisy for graveyards). I used to weep everytime I passed the gravestone for a baby who died in 1982...

see, i think 1982 woudl affect me more.

Bella I too have been known to leak in graveyards and not in the manner requiring a tena lady.

The RAF have a bit at the graveyard in Kinloss Abbey and I tried rather unsuccessfully to explain to DD (4 at the time) that Mummy is just sad that all the men who died were so very young.

'But do we know them Mummy?'
'Well no, but that doesn't mean that I can't be a little bit sad'
'Daddy, Daddy curly wirly cuckoo. My Mummy is weird.'

Oh, it's the little headstones at the parent's feet that get me.

YANBU.

These stones are In Memoriam. We remember, as that is what the headstones are for.

I cannot help but think of these people, whether the date is 1784 or1984.

I don't think people felt the death of their children any less a hundred years ago just because there was a higher mortality rate for small children.

That's like looking into a future where a one child per family policy has been brought in and thinking we (now) didn't feel it if anything happened to ours because we had more than one.

It's not something you can get used to.

I bet the girls died in childbirth.

It's hard to believe such horrific times are almost in living memory (if you're 110).

YANBU. I think it is only natural to be moved by thought of the sheer pain felt by others. Each gravestone represents hurt and loss by somebody. I always weep feel emotional in graveyards, no matter whether I knew them or not, no matter their age.

There is one near me that makes me feel awfull.

Can't remember the exact the exact wording but the listing is:

Joshua - aged 7
Thomas - aged 6
Callum - aged 5
Daniel - aged 3

All died on the same date in 2003.

Why would 1982 affect you more?

In the UK 100s of babies are born still or die young, every year, tragically.

Why does time elapsed since death make the building blocks of that tragedy any easier to accept and dismiss - even for someone who knew none of those affected?

A dead baby is tragically and irrevocably a dead baby. Death is all around, even as we deny it - in 2011, 1982, or in the 1880's, surrounded by a hideous smorgasbord of cother tragedies too, which was my point.

Ooooh - I'm a viper!!
Love it.

I have done quite a bit of genealogy on my family .... much of it in graveyards. I have total respect for all graves whether they be war dead or others. But I didn't know them.
I save tears for people I know. Call me hard hearted .... I can take it.
We have had tragic deaths in our family ..... in living memory, but not recent IYKWIM.
I don't think I want to weep at the graves of random strangers I stumble across in a graveyard. I've stood at plenty of my own relatives graves.

YANBU.

I do see.
I'd have wept right beside you.

There is a famine graveyard near my mums house, where there are eight deaths in one week. :(

No - it was unlikely to be childbirth as all the young women were unmarried -and even if it had been by the early decades of 20th c maternal care had improved somewhat over the last 30 or 40 years.

In one grave, I mesn.