cemeteries and headstones
Today is Laura Ingalls Wilder's death day. It's also the day Rose's dog Bunting died. On a happy note, it's Mrs. Power's birth day.

I've had people be horrified that I want my ashes plowed under at the Ingalls Homestead when I die. "What, no marker so your descendants can find you in a hundred years?" I don't care whether they know where I am or not, which even I don't quite understand, seeing as how I spend a lot of my time finding out death and burial details of all those "Little House" characters.

But no marker. Plowed under would be preferable (behind horses, please), but it's also fine with me if my ashes get dumped down a gopher hole. I wouldn't want anybody to be squeamish about eating something that grew in my area. In my perfect fantasy, someone is plowing me under while whistling "Here's to the Maiden," my favorite LH song. And since it was a drinking song, if anybody thinks they just have to be there, they might as well be raising a glass of something. To drink, not toast with.

I hate funerals, and I hope to never go to another one. I love cemeteries - every bit as much as I don't want my final resting place to be in one. When I visit De Smet, I also visit Myrta Spooner's grave in Lake Preston. She's not a LH character and I doubt she ever knew Laura, but they were about the same age and the Spooner and Ingalls families lived seven miles from each other in the 1880s. When I was deep into school research years ago and studying every school district in Kingsbury County, it seemed like almost every month there was some glowing report about Myrta and how well she was doing in school. Myrta wanted to be a teacher and helped with classes in the Lake Preston school about the time Laura was busy lamenting the fact that she was going to have to teach. Laura may have wanted a college education, but Myrta got one; she was in classes when Laura was in the classroom. And one winter break in 1886, Myrta came home, got sick, and died -- aged 17 years, 11 months, and 26 days. I tell you, I just cried when I learned that.

So I visit Myrta's grave and think (as I'm sure her family did) of what she might have become and what she did in her short life. One trip to Wisconsin also included a weekend in Walnut Grove, and I remember having a few hours to myself one afternoon, so I drove to De Smet. It was a pageant weekend and the place was so crowded that I (imagine this) didn't even visit the Homestead or the Memorial Society or even drive down Third Street. I didn't go to the De Smet Cemetery, but I stopped at the Lake Preston one.

As for the De Smet Cemetery, I'd like to someday raise a glass of fine Scotch whiskey to old Tom Power there, but I fear it's the kind of thing that would get you written about in the newspaper, and not pleasantly... So I'll be content to raise one in spirit, and wish the Ingalls markers weren't set in concrete and Pa's marker hadn't been moved to the front (he's really buried in the back row of that lot), and wish somebody hadn't seen the need to outfit many of the graves in those newer uniform grave markers. For pete's sake, some of those LH people might not have wanted markers; they might have wanted to be plowed under.
- posted by pioneergirl at 1:35 AM