Cemetery Trees Tell Tales

Couple of years ago, a like-minded friend and I spent a delightful day driving in southern Spokane County to the places where her family had lived. 

I snapped this pix in that cemetery (name I've forgotten). I was wandering around while she was taking pix of her family's tombstones. I was immediately struck by the eyes in the tree. Do you see them?

We cemetery-wanderers have often times felt a special kind of feeling when we visit any cemetery and especially when we visit a family cemetery. It's the sort of feeling nearly impossible to describe but it is real enough, as many would attest.

Is that big tree a "hiding place" for spirits? A resting place? A visiting place? Do the spirits of our dead ever come back to the places of their burials? And we have to ask: why would they? But if they do, they surely have their reasons. 

This photo I took in Fairmount Cemetery in Spokane. Some family member (I surmise) had come to visit and had left this little red ceramic cardinal bird atop their family's tombstone. Why would they have come to visit........ and to leave that little red bird.......... unless they felt "something," some connection with their dearly departed. 

Ah, the tales that cemetery trees could tell if they only could. 

Without A Plan All Is Lost

 

This is a true story. If you can't handle a very sad truth, quit reading right now.

I was walking one day with my Tika (dachshund) a few years ago on my gravel-county road. I came upon some stuff that a yahoo had dumped along the roadside. THAT was bad enough, but this picture, all busted apart, was in that pile of dumped junk. It didn't look recent enough to me to be a jilted girlfriend but somebody's mother or grandmother. And there it was dumped into the weeds along a gravel road.

Picture on the right was taken in a big thrift shop near Sequim. One corner of a big room was filled with stacked picture frames......... and not just frames but PICTURES. Family pictures. Why in the world? How in the world?

Okay, dear readers. A line from an old Kingston Trio song rings in my mind: "This could happen to you!" 

If you do not have a plan for all your family genealogy and photos and memorabilia, the likelihood is 90% that it will go to the dump or Goodwill. (Where do you suppose all those shoeboxes of old photos found in thrift shops comes from??????) 

Your family has their own busy lives and collecting genealogy and family history was YOUR hobby. You must not assume that they'll be as fanatical about it as you've been. 

Please, please know that I "preach" the truth here today. Please start crafting a plan for when you "cross over that Rainbow Bridge." It takes a plan to leave a legacy and not a mess.