Tag: Cemeteries

Why It Matters

No relation to me, simply illustrating family relationships carved into grave stones.

I often walked cemeteries with my husband back in the day before our oldest son was born looking for relations of his. His family surname is not common and many of them settled within a close geographic range. I didn’t know anything about my own ancestors at the time. I had not considered how often people are defined for all eternity simply by their relationships to their family members. Their identity encapsulated and literally carved in stone. Cemeteries were important then and also when I started looking for the graves of my own genetic family members, as I learned about my origins (something my adoptee parents didn’t even know when they died at 78 and 80 years old).

How is it that so many people can’t understand why these relationships might be meaningful to adoptees ? Why they might want to search for these, why their absence might be something they grieve. It is no wonder we care about our own bloodline or ancestral family. That facet of life has been ingrained into every culture as being important throughout time.  Virtually all cultures revere ancestors as I do now that I know who mine were. People will even pay a lot of money to ship bodies home for burial.

When I visited the graves of my mom’s genetic family members (all of them already deceased), I sat there at their stone markers and talked to them, poured my heart out, and told them who I was and how I was related to them. The only way I will ever have to talk to any of them.

My maternal grandfather’s grave stone in Pine Bluff Arkansas (the first one I found).

My mom’s half-sister, also in the same Pine Bluff cemetery (the information on it also led me to my cousin).

My maternal grandmother, Lizzie Lou, at Bethany Cemetery in Eads Tennessee.

I have yet to visit the graves on my dad’s side as they are further away in Arizona and California. Maybe someday, I will.

Missed Opportunities

Evelyn Grace Johnson (later Harris) at age 2

I’ve only known about this family of cousins since October 2017.  The first time I became aware of this one is because her name appeared on the back of her parents’ gravestone in Pine Bluff Arkansas.  I was at the cemetery to visit the grave of my grandfather, Jay Church Moore.  Nearby was the grave of my mom’s half-sister Javene.  I only missed her by about 2 months because she lived to a very ripe old age.

I googled and found that Evelyn lived in Pine Bluff but could not locate a phone number and so we went on to Memphis that day.  Then in May 2018, we returned to the Arkansas area to visit Evelyn’s sister, Sherry, who gave me so much insight into the family, shared so many pictures and stories that I felt as though I had lived in this, my family, for all my life.

I didn’t see Evelyn during that journey either.  I talked to her on the phone.  She said she wasn’t well but maybe when she was better we could meet.  That day, sadly, didn’t come because she passed away last Friday without us ever accomplishing that someday meeting.

I feel I missed opportunities three times now – once with Javene and then twice with Evelyn.  However, I am blessed that I even know they existed.  For over 60 years, my two parents status as adoptees meant we didn’t know our original family roots.  Now I do.  And so today, I mourn a missed opportunity – while counting my blessings – at the same time.