And the roots grow deep...

So my Mum's been on a genealogy kick for a while now, and while I know a lot about the Nash side of the family (Mum's father's side) I know very little about the Meserve side (Mum's mom). Mum found a couple of cemeteries with long-lost relatives in them, which was cool.

This was the first cemetery we went to, where we met Richard and Mary...


... and John and Matilda and Fred and Harry.


But then I admit that my interest was lost, because I was far too busy laughing. Laughing?? In a cemetery??? Well, you would too, if you saw this magnificent example of "perpetual care":


Good grief. It just gets more hysterical the closer I look at it. Talk about jury-rigs!


After that, we went to visit Mum's mom's mom Pearl. Pearl died when Mum was pregnant with me, and the story is that Mum put a rose on her casket "from the baby". Awww.



We'll get to the other Pearl story in a minute, but first, here is where Mie-Mie (Pearl's daughter, my grandmother) will be buried.



...we hope that when she dies and they go to put in her death date, they will fix that spelling error.... because we all know there is nothing as reverent as a misspelled word on a grave... except for maybe duct tape!

Now, when Pearl died, she wasn't supposed to be buried HERE. She was supposed to be buried down the street in the other cemetery, where her mother is. Well, the day that they had the funeral, there was this HUGE mix-up and while people were waiting around trying to figure out where to bury her, someone (Pearl's sister?) threw a hissy fit that they grass was too long, and started clipping it with fingernail clippers. Meanwhile, the hearse backed up into a telephone pole (Dad LOVES to tell this part) the wobbles on the wire went wow-wow (like a suspended slinky) and then, when they came to the end of the line, they wow-wowed right back.

So anyway, here's Pearl's mother and father.




I don't know why Pearl wasn't buried here, and neither does Mum. She did say that they used that pole thing to poke into the ground to see if there was room, and they said that there wasn't any room at all-- which is weird, because there are no other stones anywhere around. I don't know that much about cemeteries, but how do they truly determine if there is room or not? Were there a lot of people buried without markers? If so, then who are they?

At still another cemetery, we met the first Edith Luella Meserve, who was Mie-Mie's namesake.