Tags
I met my sister and niece in Waseca on Memorial Day. We started the day with a picnic lunch at Dad’s grave in Woodville. A nod back to the time when families routinely visited cemeteries for leisure and made a day out of it.
I thought it was appropriate that I could see this farmer working the field as I stood near Grandpa Zimny’s grave at St. Mary’s.
I took this photo of the back of Grandma and Grandpa Zimny’s gravestone because I wanted to show how it’s near the trees at the edge of the cemetery. They are in the very southwest corner of St. Mary’s; I like the isolated spot surrounded by two edges of nature, and farm fields just a stone’s throw away.
How many Bridgets are buried at St. Mary’s, I wonder? So many of the first people buried there came directly from Ireland.
Katie studies one of the old tombstones.
After we visited Grandma and Grandpa at St. Mary’s, we walked to the opposite side of the cemetery, where two baby cousins of ours are buried. Here, Peter is the son of Mom’s sister, Margaret. When I looked at Peter’s stone, I realized for the first time that he died only about 10 days before Mom and Dad were married. Then I said something like, wait a minute. We realized we were standing here exactly 50 years to the day that Peter was born. Renee and I got the chills.
At St. Mary’s we visited the graves of two military veteran relatives: our great-uncle Fabian Zimny, who served during WWII, and our uncle Norbert, who served during Vietnam.
I love cemetery gates.
Katie at the graves of her great-grandparents, Anna and Henry Hager.
Gee, if Grandma and Grandpa had had any more children, they would have needed a bigger stone!
I feel like I have hundreds of pictures of Corpus Christi church, but I can’t help myself every time I’m there. I guess the light and angle can be different each day.
If You Have Five Seconds to Spare 
The old days of just visiting…seem to be in another lifetime. Thanks for sharing.
I’m afraid not too many people do that anymore.
Lovely posting.
Thank you so much!
Rachael, I couldn’t help thinking of you as we decorated family graves at Minneopa Cemetery Sunday afternoon. As always, we pay our respects, discuss who should have two stems of this or that, and who liked which blossoms better. Then we walk around visiting graves of friends and strangers alike – gentle Ben with his physical deformities who died while mowing his sister’s lawn; graves with toys and mementos from a family who lost several children at early ages; a 31 year old man whose epitaph reads “Justice Will Be Served”, causing one to wonder why he died so young; two 19 year olds with the same first name, gone way too soon, one taking his own life, the other losing his in a car accident; a husband and wife who died on the same day, perhaps also in a car accident. The history of heartbreak and hope never ceases to amaze!
I have a couple of “gravestone stories” from Monday that I will post soon! Again, these are from cemeteries I grew up in, but failed to really pay attention before.