The Final Resting Place

Section 60
Originally uploaded by midgefrazel

GYR Carnival January 2010 "Final Resting Place"

This is a very interesting topic for the start of the new year for the Graveyard Rabbits and I am finding that I have had to give it a lot of thought before I selected a photo and blog my ideas. This is what it is proposed that we blog about:

"In today's mobile society, does one choose a place near where they last lived? Or do they return to the place of their roots? Do they rest in a family plot? If so, and if married, whose family plot? How has the determination of the final resting place changed between the time of our ancestors and now?"

Traditionally, my family has been buried with their family or in a location that is not too far from family. I have been able to figure out where they were resting either through locations they lived or from notes in my family records. My parents chose their own burial location, paid for the plot and put up the headstone. All I had to do was enter the years of death. Just that alone was hard enough. [Are you nodding in agreement, dear reader?]

My in-laws have chosen to be cremated and those ashes discarded. They are in their middle nineties. I am wondering how this is going to go when my husband's brothers find this out. I am still trying to find out exactly where the other generations are buried in their family! We have been to the right cemetery and walked around for quite some time and not located the plot. Apparently, psychic roots only works with finding your own family gravestones as I can't find his?

I have not decided about my own final resting place because I am planning to move away from where I am now. I do wish to be cremated. The last person to be buried in a coffin was my grandfather in 1955 and those following him have chosen cremation. Most of the women are buried with their husbands in their family plots. The graves are inconsistently marked with maiden or married names, right down to my own mother who didn't want her maiden name on her gravestone.

I am in the process of recording the exact location of burial of my parents and grandparents for my family records. I have been taking photos, like the one here to help them find the right spot. This photo is where my parents, my godparents, my aunt and uncle and my paternal grandparents are buried. Oddly, at the end of the plot near the tree is my maternal great-grandparents with their daughter, son, daughter in law and young granddaughter. I am always been amazed that in this huge cemetery, they are also buried in section 60!