AFTBOTGOOGD 2023

 

I was surprised that some people wrote me, asking if the annual meeting of the AFTBOTGOOGD had occurred and where the heck was my report!

So here it is.

I've not shared photos of this plot before, though we can't help but notice it, due to its location on the driveway that we take to our ancestors' graves. It is always a very lavish display and my feeling is that the grief from this loss hasn't diminished a bit. It's a kind of oxymoron, the extreme festivity of the decorating, and the devastation at the loss of a child.

This is where our maternal grandparents and uncounted other family members rest. We always drive by and this is the first year that we've left an orange.

Interestingly, from the time I was a child and came to the cemetery with my mother, I was always taken by a nearby tombstone of a lamb; the grave was for a baby, and read "Our Darling Warner T. Seidel." A few years back when Bonnie and I did our drive-by, I noticed that the lamb and inscription were gone. Now, the cemetery is in relative disrepair in several areas; many of the gravestones are cracked, illegible, or fallen. And I was sorry to find Warner's stone among the missing.

This year, when I got out of the car to place the orange, I looked next door and -- behold! -- there was the lamb! The stone had been turned around and wasn't missing after all!

Our uncle and our mother were twins and they always get matching wreaths or swags.

And then it was off to the Monilla plot, the family that we've sort of adopted since we discovered them a decade or so ago. Some years, when we arrive, they haven't visited yet, and we don't get to see that year's decorations. This year, they'd visited before we did, and the plot had a pair of small Christmas trees and some very nice seasonal signs. 

We pondered the question of whether, perhaps, some of the extended family were to make a visit subsequent to ours, and what they would think about the orange we'd left.

And then it was off to the traditional lox-on-a-toasted-everything bagel, after a job well done.