All Souls Day

I like to visit the cemeteries and bring white carnations, or whatever white flowers I can get my hands on at the grocery store that morning, on All Souls Day. My Grandmother has been helpful in showing me where to find our relatives and I like to think that maybe me following in my great grandmother's and grandmother's footsteps will be carried on by my children in the future. Time will tell; already the boys have no patience with this exercise. Haha.

It was a beautiful day today which made me too ambitious; I decided to go to 5 cemeteries. Little Miss seemed to enjoy the whole day, the boys were less than thrilled. I had to do some bribing with Dairy Queen that we happened to drive past on our way to the last cemetery. First we drove way out to Mt. Angel where my great grandmother's family lived. There are two cemeteries there. My great-great grandparents are at the modern one on the outskirts of town, as well as a few of my great-grandmother's siblings and their spouses. Since this was the first stop Deuce was respectful and into the care-taking, carefully cleaning moss off the graves.

Two of my great grandmother's brothers who died as children are buried at the old cemetery in town. Little Miss was very into having her photo taken AND making prayer hands or sorrowful faces.

On the way back towards the city I decided to stop at a cemetery in the Woodburn area where my great grandparents on a different side are interred in the big mausoleum. I don't know if real flowers are allowed in there or not, there only seem to be fake flowers in there. So I used the sink to clean the ones that were there, they were super spidery. ::shudder::

My great great aunt is also buried at this cemetery. The grounds have this very nice statue for the Civil War veterans.

Then we drove all the way back to town and stopped at the cemetery where most of my close relatives are buried. It was nice to see so many other families out visiting at their loved ones today, although that made for more witnesses of my sons running around like crazy after being in the car so long. Eventually they did come over to say a few prayers with us. Little Miss was a dedicated helper the whole time.

We could have gone home at this point. It would have been the prudent decision...but... I have been doing so much genealogy recently and have been discovering where the Catholic threads of my family tree originate that I really felt strongly about going to visit my great great grandmother whose family was French Canadian. Up until Little Miss was born and relatives were talking about her name, which happens to be a family name, but I did not know that until after the fact, I had no idea I had any French heritage. My aunt was mentioning how she always liked the name of this particular great grandmother of hers, I had never heard any stories about her since she passed long before I was born, and I agreed that it is a beautiful name. As a result I drove past the exit to our house and continued on to Vancouver to visit this new cemetery which has a quite a few family members.