Stories of The Dead

Everyone has a story – especially dead somebodies who can’t contradict what you make up about them!

We’re on vacation on the East Coast, and are now on our four-day trek home. I’ve never been to this part of the country. We were on Mount Desert Island in Maine. Beautiful! Now, as we drive on through the little towns in Maine, and then New Hampshire and soon we’ll  be in Massachusetts (this is a different route than the one we took here – we came through Canada), I look at the scenery. Beautiful!

Now I was never a history whiz in high school, but history interests me now…when I know the stories that go along with the facts. After all, I’m a story-teller at heart. Every so often, we pass a graveyard and my interest piques. They are not like the cemeteries we have at home. I’m sure they don;t’ have the same regulations concerning burial, because there were some graveyards that only had a few headstones in people’s back yards! (My dad’s funeral a few years ago cost an obscene amount of money for plot, regulation-approved casket, service, etc.!)

These graveyards are smaller than the cemeteries in my neck of the woods, cropping up every few miles alongside the road, or like I said – in a backyard. And some of the headstones are ornate. I can tell many of them are really old! I’m sure they must have clever (or maybe mysterious?) inscriptions. Some dates may be over a hundred years old, considering the age of these states!  I have asked Mike if we could stop several times so I could meander through one or two. “What for?” He asks. “Because there are so many STORIES, Mike!” (I could almost HEAR him think, “How long will THIS caper take her???? Nah – we haven’t the time!”) You can guess that we haven’t stopped yet…but I’m not through trying… ;)