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?

Salmo, have PM'd you. :)

I spent a lot of time last year researching my family tree back to the 1600s. Sadly, the picture you describe in your op is one that echos through my family for generations.

My great, great grandma died when I was little. She was a formidable woman and was in her 90s. She talked extensively of her 14 siblings, most of whom didn't survive. She lost all of her sisters to tuberculosis, some of her brothers to measles and the war and most of her nieces and nephews to tuberculosis. She gave a locket to me containing a picture of her sister who died in 1902 from tuberculosis, plus a lock of her hair. She would never know that her baby died a month later and her surviving son was killed in WWI. That locket is one of my most treasured possessions. Her name was Esther and she was one of hundreds of relatives that died young. I've seen the family graves now and they're just as you describe. It's astounding what health improvements and contraception have done for us.

thumbwitch - I've replied

I love our town graveyard. It's huge, with the oldest plots near the front and is still being used at the back. Some thugs ran riot in the newer area a couple of weeks ago and smashed about 50 graves up, including children and stillborn babies. The town is out for blood at the moment.
It's lovely in the older sections, huge mature trees, wildflowers, mistletoe, squirrels, birds calling, rabbits hiding under yews. One inscription from there I remember is "Hoping that remembrance will reach him where he sleeps".
My dad's old best friend is further up, he committed suicide in 1984 when he was 25. I remember him reading me my first book from infant school. I still pay him my respects when I pass through and shed a tear for him and my dad.

I did not spend much time in a grave yard till my dear Dad dies in 2009. Now, when I go to lay flowers I find myself wandering around reading headstones. They are a lasting reminder that someone had a life, and that people love and miss them.

It saddens me that in 100 years my Dad's grave will be just an old gravestone.

yanbu, Bella. Though I wish I hadn't read this today, it's a year since my friend died.

We are in the process of trying to find the words and form for our four year old daughter's grave marker. It's such an odd, unwelcome and important thing to have to do that we keep putting it off.

I think one of the reasons we are so wary of it is that it's a public thing that will be scrutinised, wept over, touched or disregarded, depending on who is looking at it. The pressure to get it right is extraordinary.

And of course, it can never say what one really feels because that's impossible to frame in words anyway.

Interesting thread. Makes me grateful that child mortality is so low these days that we have every chance of seeing our remaining child grow to adulthood.

YANBU - I love walking through graveyards on my own and used to live next to one as a child where we used to sneak away to play as the grass was extra bouncy, even as a child I loved the peacefulness and liked to read about the people there as I hated to think of them being forgotten. There is something peaceful and I have felt very sad and shed a few tears at some of the headstones, especially when it's children. Even on holiday, I like to stroll through the graveyard. War graveyards of soldiers are usually very beautiful and moving, been to the one in Galipolli for all the Anzac troops and was touched by a memorial to them from Ataturk, a famous Turkish Leader who told the troops mothers and fathers that although on Turkish soil the Turks had taken these young men to their hearts and would look after them as they would their own (or something along those lines) - it was very moving.

Makes me sound like some kind of weird graveyard junkie.

Zeno so sorry you lost your daughter. Choosing the words for my Dad's headstone was awful, I can not imagine choosing one for my child.

Zeno - very sorry to hear about your daughter, I can see why getting this right is so important for you, I'm sure you will find the right words.

Salmotrutta - I think I can see what your problem is. It's all about YOU. You are trying to make this thread about you now. Try empathising with others and you might get an inkling of what moved OP.

I don't think that's fair to Salmotrutta - she has tried to explain how she feels and apologised for remarks she made earlier.

Next to my aunt's grave (she dies when she was 21), there is the grave of a 17 year old girl called Caroline. Caroline didn't want to marry her boyfriend, and had fallen out with her family. She dies after drinking bleach and her boyfriend burried her in her wedding dress. I always feel that she must of been so desprate to have done that.

Despite the opening post I have found this thread very touching and thought provoking.

How on earth did you memorize all those names and exact dates until you got home and then post them on here? Weird!

Zeno, I'm so sorry that you have lost your daughter.
I know my parents worried terribly over my sisters gravestone. They then had to fight to get the marker they felt was appropriate.
She was only 3yo.
They chose a light, bright granite stone and apart from my sister's name and dates, they simply put the phrase 'an angel unawares'. They planted the plot with tiny daffodils and forget-me-nots.

One of the hardest things we ever did was to leave the village where she is buried.

Zeno - so :( for you - what an awful thing to have to do.

Onedge - unnecessary - Salmotrutta is not making this thread about herself at all - perhaps you are confusing her with sweetgilly?

peeriebear - I really hope they find the thugs and do something extremely unpleasant to them - bad enough to lose a baby, to have to bury it in the ground, but to then have that memorial desecrated by mindless vandalism would break your heart all over again.:(

My grandad died last year at the age of 97. He was the eldest and last of his six siblings. Three never made it to adulthood - two were lost to childhood illnesses, one had polio but recovered and lived to her 80's, but was always weak and limped, and never had children as no-one thought she could cope. The other child died carrying a candle to bed - the flames caught her shawl and she burned to death. It fascinates me, in a horrible way, that my grandad, who used to run about and play with us, and worked right up till he was 90, and was so...alive...grew up in a world where this was normal. He always looked after his sister, I remember being told she was "weak" when she was just another old lady to me (I was only 11 when she died). I dunno, it just seems so far away, but it really wasn't. My one year old child has been held by someone who saw his baby siblings die as a matter of course. That is terribly sad.

SweetGilly - you are anything but sweet, but please feel free to carry on PYSL at those of us with empathy. Those of us who hurt so badly we can't help but have empathy with others. I would tell you what a nasty cow you are, but as that's against the rules I wont.

I am sitting here crying now, partly for my own losses, partly for others on here who have had such incredibly sad losses, partly for the memories of gravestones of people I don't know and in part because of someone who not only doesn't understand, but also thinks it's fair game to mock those of us who feel that sadness and understand the pain behind a gravestone.

Yes, I did cry when Diana died - FOR her children, for two small boys who had just lost their Mum & who wouldn't even have the love & family life that other children who have lost their Mum would most likely have. It was tragic - for her sons - I am not even slightly embarrassed to have cried about that.

Don't let sweetgilly get to you Chipping, it must be a sad life for a person who makes the effort to go on a thread like this to get a laugh.

I'm not a 'cryer' either, but I was blubbing shed a tear at Dianas funeral, the lads walking behind their mums coffin in front of the world was enough to move even an emotionally repressed person like myself.

For some reason I found the whole "lining the streets, weeping" aspect of Diana's funeral a bit

BUT... if I saw her grave I would be wiping away the silent tears. I'm not sure what the difference is. The public outpouring of grief makes me balk a little. But I am incredibly moved by graves and stories of pain and hurt.

YANBU as a 10+ year old child (once I was allowed to wander about on my own) I would often look over the church wall and I'd always pause at the grave of an old man I'd known and an old one for a 7 year old girl - no details just a large grave stone with a name and the age, it always moved me that she was younger than me. And it puzzles me now that she seemed to have such a large stone when children died so often as to normally be footnotes Perhaps the family intended to be buried with her and moved away, but somebody loved her.