I wish I could have given them a hug. I wish I had known them in the physical sense. I have become very fond of both of them. I am not exactly sure why. The search maybe, the fact that Grandpa Everett had photo’s of them maybe…. I can not be sure. Maybe because they are such a sweet looking couple. Maybe because I was able to find interesting day to day information about them from Melba. Grandpa John had a sweet tooth and chewed a bit of tobacco. Grandma Emma sewed. I hope she did it because she liked it, like me, not just because she had to….. Or that Grandpa did a lot of work to make money to pay for large doctor bills for Emma’s medical care. Wish I knew why she had been sick and what she had. Grandpa John chopped wood and sold it to pay her bills. Or maybe because she had hostas in her yard by her porch, just like me. All of these are good reasons even if they are not the right reason.
It took me some time to find where they were buried. The obit for Emma, said Clio, Michigan because that is where their oldest daughter lived. It became necessary at some point for them to go live with her. SO they did. But the cemetery showed no sigh of them being buried there. I wandered the cemetery several time looking…I looked near Alvin and Cora… I looked near Everett and Lillian….Eventually it took a visit to the Cemetery Office before I could find out exactly where their final resting place was. I could not find it because they had no gravestone. Cora must not have had enough money to buy them one. She, herself a widow, had remarried John Daly, but she did not work. She had no real money to speak of to call her own. So her parents had no gravestone. No obvious marker to tell where they were buried and acknowledge the fact that they had existed at all.
It made me feel sad. This cute couple which I had gotten to know through family documents, photos, census records, a Store ledger and a Doctors log had no gravestone. Nothing left in the world, other than records on paper, to prove that they had existed. I felt compelled to change that. I worked and I had a bit of money so I bought them one because I loved my Grandma Emma and Grandpa John. I want the next Grandchild who goes in search of this sweet couple to be able to find them. So today’s Tombstone Tuesday shows the tombstone of John H Crites and Amanda (McGoogan) Crites.
So I could finally hug them!
I love you Grandma Emma and Grandpa John!
Your Granddaughter, Jan
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