My apologies for being weird and spending time amongst tombstones, but I'm working on documenting our church's cemetery info. Earlier this summer, the deacons of our church issued a call for a volunteer or two to take on this cemetery task. The past several Sunday afternoons, I"ve spent a couple hours there, making a chart of the gravestone rows, and trying to write down and photograph the engravings. Many of the really old stones are almost impossible to read anymore. Many include long verses in German. Geboren means "born" and Gestorben means "died". I think Hier ruht in Gott means "asleep in God", or something like that. Maybe someone can tell me what the second half of this verse means (I think the first part means "Christ is my Love"): Christus ist mein Leben; Sterben ist mein Gewinn. (Maybe the second part means, "Heaven is my Home".) [After publishing, I found the German-English dictionary website linked to at the end of this post. Sterben means "death", and Gewinn means "profit; prize", the verse coming from Philippians 1:21.]
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Anyhow.........can you tell what's hanging on this tombstone? Oh, that's right.........the title of this blogpost gave it away!!
Its an abandoned Monarch butterfly chrysalis----hanging on the stone of a 39-year-old woman named Christine who died in February of 1902, one day after giving birth to a son, Henry, who died the same day he was born. He's buried here, too; a story-teller could probably weave a moving tale from the few facts on and around this tombstone. (Just think of ALL the stories buried in ALL the cemeteries ALL over the world!) I had our church's history book with me, and looked up the baptism of little Henry.......yes, it is recorded that he was born, baptized, and died, all on the same day. Baptism-----surely an extra special comfort in those days when birthing deaths were so common. Also, I complain about Lutherans sometimes, but they certainly do keep meticulous records of events like baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and burials-----useful info for genealogical research..JPG)
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I had blogged a few weeks ago about a chrysalis in our road ditch, and how it appeared to have tiny gold metallic beading around it. The beading is still visible on this empty one, too. Amazing, too, how it could stay attached to the tombstone, even in windy weather conditions.
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This tends to be a very peaceful spot to spend time in........there's just me, the warm sunshine, silent stones, rustling cornstalks, chirping crickets, and killdeer and finches flitting by with a rapid-song greeting. In the next photo, my chair is sitting between two rows of childrens' stones. That first row along the cornfield contains adult graves.......then there's the two rows of children, then another adult row, and another children's row. There's alot of children, unfortunately, in these rows dating from the 1880's onward to the early 1900's. Common name choices of the era and culture include Friedrich, Johann, Heinrich, Wilhelm, Maria, Dorothea, Caroline.
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So, you may or may not wonder..........do I remain stoically unaffected by my sojourn amongst the tombstones? Well-----being not made of granite or marble-----I bawled all the way home this time (which is only five miles)........then was OK again. If my family noticed my red eyes, I could always easily mislead them by saying the pollen count must be high, causing my hayfever to act up!
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P.S. - To see some fantastic photos of a Monarch butterfly chrysalis,
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[P.S. again - After publishing this post, I found a link to a German-English dictionary site from which to find translations of the German words!]
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19 comments:
do you have handy the Johann first names I have the family history and I come from a long line of Johann's :) some of the family made this book about 10 years ago its facinating and has pictures too :) I love to visit cemetaries and read the stones and wonder...
hugs Laura
or were the names first names... duh sometimes I read faster than my itty bitty brain processes.
Hi, Laura,
Yes, the names I listed are first names, but I didn't make that completely clear.
Johann is John in English, of course......Heinrich is Henry, Wilhelm is William, Friedrich is Frederick......
I love cemeteries and spend time in the ancient ones here in Boston. I even spent a Halloween night in a cemetery with a few friends.
I too am astonished that the chrysalis remained attached. I wonder if the caterpillar found a place with crumbling cement to tie the coccoon on to. Not that I think caterpillars reason these things out. LOL
I too have spent considerable time in cemeteries but not for so noble a task as yours. When I grew up living in small towns and hamlets, the only parks or greenspaces in the prairies were cemeteries. So us children used to pick prairie flowers and adorn the graves, wandering in amongst them solemnly then sitting under the one or two planted trees and in the shade composed stories of lives long ago.
Jeannelle, Christus ist mein Leben; Sterben ist mein Gewinn" is basically Philippians 1:21, "To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." A literal translation from the German is "Christ is my Life; Death is my Gain."
Cool photo's. Good luck with your documentation:)
How you find the time Jeannelle is beyond me. I feel like a slug by comparison. I do love cemetaries though, especially old ones. It's so fun to speculate on some of the tombstones. You are a busy blogger girl.! Have fun with the documentation of the cemetary. It must be rewarding and so valuable. Much of it gets lost it seems because no one kept records.
I have always loved a graveyard. It feels very peaceful to me and the old headstones always make me want to know the stories. I once heard that you should make all major life decisions while standing in a graveyard. The certainty of death often gives us more gratitude for life.
Jeanelle, I had tears in my eyes reading your story about all the children who died so young! What an intersting project you have. Also, thanks for sharing after my first comment recently. I understand. Dairymary
laura, rhea, ruth, trish, rhymsie, adventuregirl, sherry, oddchick, and dairymary,
Thank you all for your very thoughtful comments! It is fun to read of others who can say they enjoy spending time in a cemetery!
oddchick: What wisdom, that idea of making important life decisions in a cememtery.....I've never heard of that before!
I too, like old cemeteries...they facinate me. Even as a child, I would wander thru and read the names, the years and wonder about their lives...
Enjoyed this post very much! I went through a phase a few years ago when I was going to all sorts of local and not so local cemeteries. My favorites were, without question, the remote cemeteries that were no longer or rarely used today.
We have lots of pioneer cemeteries in Iowa (as you know) and these are fascinating.
I took a picture once of a tombstone that - now get this - had one man's name on it and THREE of his wives on the SAME stone! Along with the wives were several children.
I am guessing - and it is not too hard to figure out - that the women died in child birth or some sort of epedimic that took a lot of people including children. It was a hard time in those pioneer days and I have lots of respect for those people.
I think if I had lived then I would have been one of those who stayed back East and not ventured out into the middle of nowhere. But then again, maybe I would have sought the adventure, I don't know...
Thanks for a most interesting post!
Hi, w.o.w.,
Good! You're fascinated by old cemeteries, too! It is our history.....we wouldn't be here if those people hadn't been here first and undergone all the ordeals they did.
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Hi, Russell,
Thank you for your thoughtful comment! Yes, the really old cemeteries are just fascinating. I grew up near our township's pioneer cemetery, and we kids often rode our bikes there and wandered around, reading the tombstones. I went back there a few months ago, and was struck by how many times a mother and baby were buried together. What a different world back then, without all the modern medical interventions that we have now.
But, you know, even the people back East probably had epidemics go through and the same difficulties with childbirth. But, I wonder, too, if I would have had the courage to venture to the frontier.
Very interesting to find links to the past. You think Lutherens keep good records...try Salt Lake. They got those Lutherens whooped!
Hi, Maybelline,
Oh, yes, that's right.......I forgot about the Mormons' obsession with genealogical records!
Hi,
I seem to be visiting your blog frequently, wich is nice;)
I think this might be useful:
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/
That's pretty good online translator machine, with quite many different languages.
Hi, system operator,
Thank you for the link to the translator.....I will check that out!
Its nice of you to visit here!
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