A last look

Today was long. Back to the mechanic for yet another repair on the car, so we walked down the road to the cemetery at the girls' request, as we did last time. I was taken with these tree-trunk tombstones. Lily said they must have been nature lovers like us. The one on the right is for a wife, Carrie, who was born in 1987 and died in 1913 - 16-year-old bride.



We were very moved by this grave of a young mother, who is obviously still very much loved and missed. I am thankful the kids who vandalized our house and who I believe live in the shadow of this cemetery, have not destroyed or removed the sweet momentos left for loved ones. One grave for a 19-year-old young man who died in 1992 had a little frog statue on top and a silver cross necklace hanging from a stone placed on top of his headstone.

After reading numerous tombstones and wondering about their stories, we walked on down to our house. I can't believe it is 18 months since we moved out. It will be sold at auction on May 5, and the girls and I decided to take one last look. It was quite overgrown all down our long drive (we're sticklers for long drives into the woods).




They are looking out across our pond. There we were often visited by Great Blue Herons, and the girls watched a Canada goose pair make a nest and lay a clutch of eggs. She would actually take bits of twigs and things from the girls and tuck them into her nest, and loved it when they blew bubbles for her, nibbling at them with her shiny beak. They spent hours out there near her and she came to really like them. Just as the eggs were about to hatch the kids living across the pond destroyed the nest. The girls found one of the babies and the mother dead. We were all heartbroken, and that's when the girls got the finches they were wanting! There was a big old catfish who lived in the pond, looking like some ancient creature from another time, who became quite tame, and the girls fed scraps to him. He would speed over to the edge of the pond when he saw them coming.

We could never have fixed all that was wrong, and it was a disastrous place to live, with the pond above that overflowed, the very long drive that washed out every time it rained, the perpetually broken 2/10-mile-long water pipe, and very little that worked the last couple of years, but it was our first home together as a family, so it is special. I'm glad we bid it farewell.