Cemetery Picnic

What do you pack for a picnic at a cemetery?

Okay.  I should probably back up. For Mother’s Day, I took my mother to a cemetery for a picnic. This is not a hint to my mother that she has one foot in the grave and not a me being dramatic and exaggerating the truth.  The truth is, I did take my mother to a cemetery.  The cemetery in question is about an hour away and is the cemetery that hold the remains of the first generation of our family in America.  Pretty exciting stuff if you are interested in family history/ genealogy.  Since the cemetery is about an hour a way, it makes sense to bring a picnic and refreshment, which bring me back to my original question. 

What do you pack for a picnic at a cemetery?

Do you go full funeral meal and bring cold salads and finger food? Do you liven it up and play off a Halloween theme? Do keep it to traditional picnic food? These questions rolled around in my head, until I did a mash up of all three.

Cemetery Picnic Menu

Chicken Salad on Onion Rolls with Cheese and Tomato

Deviled Eggs

Marinated Mushrooms

Mozzarella and Tomato

Strawberries

Dirt Cups. (Chocolate Pudding with crushed Oreo’s and Gummy Worms)

What would you pack for your picnic?

Let's Pretend They Are Dead

I once joked that I am of the product of when two black sheep get together and breed. Not actual sheep but the figurative family sheep. Both of my parents are not in the slightest bit what one would call close to their siblings or other bits of immediate family other than possibly me. And the only reason we are close is because  I am one part science fiction mixed with two parts rum. (I might have my ratios off, because I think you muddle up some charm in there and serve it over ice, kind of like a Caipirinha, but I could be exaggerating.)

It isn't easy to find the family connection. In fact it take quite a bit of effort and cheek biting. However I found a way around it, that doesn't make me go cross eyed. All I needed to do was to go back further and try and find the beginning. I am not talking about the beginning where the family ties got frayed, but the beginning of the family itself.  My family has an unspoken motto "Let's Pretend They Are Dead".  If there is something that ruffles our delicate sensibilities, if becomes easier to pretend that they are dead and keep moving than to do the difficult thing and work it out. Nothing cuts like family, and sometimes the cuts never truly heal. 

This motto has worked marvelously in daily life, but has made genealogy quite interesting. I am constantly amazed at what I discover when doing genealogy. I find flawed people in the pages of history.  They are messy with their marriages, rural in their location and tend to spread out like molasses in the sun.  Despite common beliefs, not every one is dead. When you stumble across the living, it is awkward messy and sometimes really beautiful. I am amazed that I found a strong family connection in the headstones of graveyards, and among old census records.  In a time of divorce, remarriage and seven degrees of separation, the realization that the endurance of a blood line lies with in the very breathe you take, is remarkable and humbling.

I think that I found myself a sort of inner peace that I didn't was missing until I took up genealogy. My family is still complicated. It is still messy and incredibly hard to connect with my family, and it may never get better or it might. Connecting the lines between the generations  and solving the mystery of my lineage makes coping with the living a little less horrible.  Nothing is truly ever written in stone, until you are under the stone, and then it is all left up to interpretation.

If you are interested in taking up the rewarding adventure of genealogy, I would highly recommend using Familyseach.org. It is an easy to use site, that does not cost anything. It is a great site for those that can only do genealogy in their spare time.