Bad news at the cemetery....

Dear Diary,

The last thing I felt like doing yesterday afternoon was driving to Portland which takes about and hour and a quarter but the lady from the Spirits Alive group that restores the stones said they had excavated my 3X great grandmother's and daughter's stones and thought I needed to get there to see them.  There is no hope to restore them as one is missing a large part and the other is just too far gone.  But that wasn't the really bad news.

When they dug down they discovered that someone had moved them to the right and there was not, as we had originally thought, a space to put the captain's stone.  I was so disappointed!  They are going to bury these stones, with the pieces in a vertical position, as is the requirement of the historical commission for stones that are beyond fixing and that may actually be a small blessing in disguise.

Since there stones will now be "gone" they thought that I have the right as a descendant to replace them with flat markers.  I could then get a mention of the captain on his wife's plaque, not exactly what I'd hoped for but better than nothing.  I will talk to the cemetery superintendent further about this but right now my grand plan of a stone for the captain seems impossible.  Sigh....at least the poison ivy seems a bit better this morning and that nice woman in today's photograph said she will clean Emily's stone, the last one standing, so at least it will look better.