Old friends and family - one day, two "walks"

Mid-afternoon:

Do you have any LONG TIME friends? Seriously, I am talking about friends who have known you forever.

I have friends I have known, well, let's just say, since my mother was in the first grade. "How can this be?" you ask.

My mother met her best friend in the first grade. They were friends through high school, as they married and had children, and thereafter. They were best friends all their lives. And mom shared stories of their friendship (so I know about fixing bicycles, running across the old "condemned" river bridge and bumming cigarettes from the priest).

Because they were such good friends and because my "aunt" and her husband, "Uncle L," lived in the same town as my grandmother, we grew up with their children. Except for the youngest in each family who were born the same year, our mothers seemed to "stagger" childbirth. This meant there was always a kid either one year older or one year younger with whom we could hang out.

For many years we vacationed together and attended reunions of our mothers' graduating class. We have visited off and on for years. And, through the miracle of the Internet, we continue to stay in touch.

DH and I traveled to my mother's hometown today at the recommendation of my youngest brother. The local historical society hosts a cemetery walk at the end of October every year. This year's walk was at the cemetery where my mother's people are buried. The graves of one grandmother, one grandfather, one great grandmother, two great grandfathers, one uncle, one great aunt, a number of great great aunts and uncles, and an unknowable number of cousins are there.* And my brother had gotten our tickets. We were going.

But before the walk, we called our friends. And they invited us to lunch. [If you are not blessed to be a southerner and do not have long-time friends, you will not understand this paragraph at all.]  We did not intend to "invite ourselves over" for lunch as we were arriving mid-afternoon. But, once invited, we were determined that we could and would, in fact, make it if the traffic and road condition gods operated in our favor.

We had a wonderful time with our "uncle,"  4 of the 6 children and a cat who wandered in and out. Our mothers are gone now, but they are still so present as we all visit, share stories, catch up on our todays, talk about plans, and remember.

We could have ended the day right there, stomachs and hearts full.

What a gift it is to have such friends!

Evergreen:

We met my brother and his family at the gate, arriving early so we could find and photograph family plots. Of course we found work to do. My great grandmother's stone was gone when we arrived at the family plot. Where was she? We decided to look beneath an overgrown shrub and, yes, there she was! I suspect there are garden clippers in my future.

Oh the stories that were coming to life as we found different family - my grandparents, my grandmother's half siblings, and my great grandmother's sisters.** We searched briefly for my great grandfather we only recently discovered had been buried in this place, but gave up with a plan to return with directions (and the aforementioned garden clippers).

Then the cemetery walk began.

Tour guides (ours was P - one of the grown children mentioned above) took groups to 12 stations. At each station a "ghost" told  about his/her life during the civil war era. The ghosts were in period costume and the stories were well researched. Each ghost made the history of that community "come alive."

We learned a good bit of Texas history. Some of the ghosts were descendants of the people they portrayed and two of the ghosts were connected (or were possibly connected) in some way to our great grandfather. While it was a short walk along the paths of the cemetery, it was a long walk through history. And we were smitten. We could do this and would do this in the future, we vowed.

**Five little girls were orphaned. Their family was German and they were taken into German families in town. One was my great grandmother. This is the grave of one of her sisters. She was adopted by a blacksmith and his wife.

Great great aunt's adoptive father's stone. Translation to come.

Great great aunt's adoptive mother's stone. [She died at the age of 76. And the quote is something like "Blessed are those who die in the Lord." I will work on this.]

Large marker in my great grandfather's plot. His marker is just beyond. My great grandmother's is under the bush.

My brother's legs on either side of the stone as he "backs" the bush out of the way.

Had to take a photo of the plot at dark.

Family plot from a distance. It is not a good cemetery story without photos of "orbs" at the end. No?

* My great grandfather had three wives. The first died childless. The second had at least 8 children who survived to adulthood. The third, my great grandmother, had two children. There are loads of family represented here in Evergreen.