Local Maine cemeteries.
As a kid in Houlton Maine, my three older brothers and I grew up knowing we
were part of a larger family. We learned about our uncles, great aunts, great great great grandparents from our journies growing up with visits to the local cemeteries in Houlton and Hodgdon Maine in my case. My mom was a Benn from Hodgdon Maine. We sometimes got a double header by driving to check out the Mooers side of the family, and then after a stop at the local ice cream dairy bar, we would be slurping, enjoying some cold on a hot day as we headed to cemetery number two. The trips were not an everyday occurrence but more than once a year on Memorial Day. My dad was a world war two veteran, so seeing the section of Evergreen Cemetery with the US flags and veteran markers hit home. My brothers and I were taught respect for our freedom and talked about friends of my dad that went overseas and did not come back.
Or others that returned but left something where they fought on foreign soil.In addition to family members, veterans and planting flowers or shrubs during our Houlton Maine area cemetery tours, the local town fathers were discussed. Who was Joseph Houlton anyway? We stopped the car, piled out and a history lesson was lifted from the grave stone, along with narration from my dad or mom on Old Joe and the others who made the trip up river, thru the Maine woods to get to what was called initially New Salem. Joseph Houlton wandered up and met the Maliseet, Mic Mac local Native American Indians. Everyone got along fine and dandy with the woman and children heading up within the next two years around the date 1807. The streets of Houlton Maine, the buildings or subdivisions of land homes were built on over the years were named after folks buried over the years in that cemetery. As kids were were not taught to fear death, or that a graveyard was a scary place. It was a respected area of town, with no visits at night. But growing up, I learned my place in a family and about that family from reading Houlton Maine area tombstones.
I passed on the same history lesson and education on life and death with my own four kids. Something about respect, honor and history made the trip part of my kids life too. I wanted them to know who Buppy and Nana's parents were, how many brothers and sisters each had. To know the dates and to see the veteran markers, the local town fathers and community leaders' graves. To respect them, know about them. And underlying it all realizing and accepting that life is short. Ticking by. Shorter for some than others. But realizing that soldiers die, infants leave the earth way way too early in some cases than any of us would like.
Death is not something to be feared. Death is part of life.
The cemetary markets help us keep it all in perspective. As you visit a Maine cemetery or any I would guess, you see a car with the trunk open and a widow planting flowers bought for the occasion and carried in that trunk. You think about as a kid that that lady is without her mate, her husband but life goes on. This is what you do to not forget the person, but maybe to remember them, honor them.I would notice another fresh grave near one our regular visits and think, someone else I did not know must have died recently. Right on time, nothing we control. Something we take in stride. Follow in the local Houlton Pioneer Times or Bangor Daily News obituaries.
Over in another section, a grounds keeper is mowing a section, a back hoe in another region is preparing for a grave side service. In still another region like the spot where Joseph Houlton the town founder is buried, dates and times are being written down by a historian or another grave site is studies by a family member looking for clues, 
doing genealogy. As an adult visiting my own parent's grave, and now with the four kids off to college and on with life, I have a sense of peace and the beauty of the setting of our local cemeteries that are so well kept, that offer tremendous views and picture book settings.
It seems others before me, and after me will carry on the tradition of cemeteries to honor and remember the dead. In Ludlow Maine, high on a hill and visiting another of my dad's relative's graves another memory.
And even fixing the old grave stone tablet of a revolutionary war general Cummings buried there with my dad, my oldest daughter Elizabeth part of the respect you extended family you would never know in person.
I hope my kids carry on the tradition and learn not to fear death. And to remember talks we had, history we learned from these field trips to local graveyards in Houlton Maine.
Andrew....I love reading your blogs on Houlton....It brings me back to the late 1960's......I don't suppose you knew Ralph and Eleanor Howard? Ralph was the head of the local hospital....Eleanor was a biology instructor at Ricker College....is there still a Smith Potato Farm in Presque Isle??? Did you know Rev. Buzzer? He and his family lived near the college in Houlton....also, I think I lived in an apartment on Spring Street when I was teaching at Island Falls High School in 1969.
Hey Barbara. Thanks for the calendar we got in today's mail. Was Ralph Howard the father of Woody, the broadway singer/actor? I think they lived on a farm on Westford Hill Road in Hodgdon, south of Houlton ME. Smith potato farm..think you mean in Westfield..Herschel who is retired but boys continue the tradition and broccoli is big with them. Sold them over 100 acres of ground a while back. Know the row of Spring St apartments that you probably lived in. And the name Rev Buzzer. Sound like a regular practical joker..to avoid hand shakes and resort to head nods right? You have seen the Northern Maine movie, read the book and know all about Ricker College.
I may be in the minority, but cemetaries don't creep me out at all ... I love them! One of my aunts in Scotland refers to them as the "dead center of town" ... LOL!!
One of these days, I'm going to take my camera to our local cemetary in Herndon ... we have gravestones that go back a long way and I'd love the get some shots of them. Thanks for posting this reminder for me!
I agree Glenda. I get the same feeling when I climb say Mt Katahdin in Maine or other hills we hiked when the four kids were young. The day to day hustle, hurry stops for a moment and you get a glimpse of the real score or pattern. What our short time on earth, what life is all about. Everything happening right on time.
Cemeteries can put it all in perspective as part of the puzzle and you quickly figure out what is important, realy matters. Thanks for popping in...taking time to comment.
Andrew, I find cemeteries fastinating. They can tell you the history of eras in communities without ever speaking (outloud). When we visit a new area, the cemetery is usually on our list of places to visit.
I do however have one gripe with them today. I wish that people would leave their silk and plastic flowers at home. I told my husband that if I die before him, there are never to be any of those tacky, faded items on my headstone.
Ginger..agree with you learning without words...neat way to look at it. When I was with two youngest kids checking out Dalhousie University in Halifax Nova Scotia I noticed a sign about the Titanic...we went and check it out. That grave yard visit was an entirely different visit and made you really think about the Titanic sinking event of going down at sea in a boat with out enough space for the passengers to survive and you saw the evidence, results of that tragedy, felt the cold water of the Atlantic.
As for plastic flowers..I remember one early spring and we had 25 minutes before we picked up a pizza, it was a Sunday afternoon and the kids and I took a slow drive thru on the way back from their grandparent's farm. We got out and we reading one old old stone, noticing a small lamb and talking about a child that was very young that died very very early in life when oldes daughter found some plastic flowers in the wire refuse can near it. Without fanfare, she put a few on the grave thinking it was neglected as other stones were surrounded by fresh real flowers. Plastic may not be pretty, but it is the thought that counts and before the real ones kick in, due to weather and the cold, sometimes they fill a need. Elizabeth felt a sense of neglect or in her heart the need to do something. I think that is a good urge, desire, sense of helping others...dead or alive.
Andrew, you are right and that was presumptious of me. At least the plastic flowers show that someone, at some time was there to pay their respects. I know that at many cemetaries they are removed after a period of time so that things do start looking too shabby.
My Bad and thanks for calling me out on it.
My wife and I often investigate old cemeteries on our vacations. You really get a great sense of history from such visits.
Ginger...know the sentiment of real flowers. I am not a fan of plastic but I see the thought that counts. Maybe silk is the way to roll? Tom, it is history. Like the Titanic wreck highlighted in above comment.