Cemetery Sentimentals

Here I was online thinking of what to add to this seemingly empty blog. What to write? The question kept surfacing in my mind. Then, when I thought I was beginning to grab hold of an interesting topic, my phone rang.

It was my aunt. She asked whether I could come over to her place to help her out with some documents. Apparently, the Municipal Council wants to reclaim any unused grave land for "reburying" (is there such a word?). So those with graves need to register them to avoid the land being reclaimed by the MPPP...What a drag....

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting on the sofa in my grandmother's house, looking at a list of names I had never seen before. And I had to get their plot numbers, the systematic location of their graves. My grandmother came along as well as Nelson. When we arrived, we couldn't find the management office! After walking around and a few calls, we discovered it hidden behind the columbarium(the House of Ashes)and outside the cemetery. Then attendant in charge handed us a form and asked us to fill in the particulars of those buried so he could refer to the register for their respective plot numbers. This was gonna take a while.

In the end we had to locate two unknown ancestors (two great grandmothers in fact), both married to my grandmother's grandfather. Besides that I also found out that my grandmother's father was bombed and my grandfathers dad had tuberculosis. Also, I realised that I was dealing with people from five generations ago (well at least whats left of them...). On the way home, I couldn't help wonder what would happen to me five generations later? Would my grave be readable like my ancestors, or forgotten by my descendants like the few I passed by in the cemetery? It was certainly something that I would never had thought about if not for this visit to the cemetery.