Local Maine cemeteries.

As a kid in Houlton Maine, my three older brothers and I grew up knowing we were part of a larger family. We learned about our uncles, great aunts, great great great grandparents from our journies growing up with visits to the local cemeteries in Houlton and Hodgdon Maine in my case. My mom was a Benn from Hodgdon Maine. We sometimes got a double header by driving to check out the Mooers side of the family, and then after a stop at the local ice cream dairy bar, we would be slurping, enjoying some cold on a hot day as we headed to cemetery number two. The trips were not an everyday occurrence but more than once a year on Memorial Day. My dad was a world war two veteran, so seeing the section of Evergreen Cemetery with the US flags and veteran markers hit home.

My brothers and I were taught respect for our freedom and talked about friends of my dad that went overseas and did not come back.

Or others that returned but left something where they fought on foreign soil.

     In addition to family members, veterans and planting flowers or shrubs during our Houlton Maine area cemetery tours, the local town fathers were discussed. Who was Joseph Houlton anyway? We stopped the car, piled out and a history lesson was lifted from the grave stone, along with narration from my dad or mom on Old Joe and the others who made the trip up river, thru the Maine woods to get to what was called initially New Salem. Joseph Houlton wandered up and met the Maliseet, Mic Mac local Native American Indians. Everyone got along fine and dandy with the woman and children heading up within the next two years around the date 1807. The streets of Houlton Maine, the buildings or subdivisions of land homes were built on over the years were named after folks buried over the years in that cemetery. As kids were were not taught to fear death, or that a graveyard was a scary place. It was a respected area of town, with no visits at night. But growing up, I learned my place in a family and about that family from reading Houlton Maine area tombstones.

     I passed on the same history lesson and education on life and death with my own four kids. Something about respect, honor and history made the trip part of my kids life too. I wanted them to know who Buppy and Nana's parents were, how many brothers and sisters each had. To know the dates and to see the veteran markers, the local town fathers and community leaders' graves. To respect them, know about them. And underlying it all realizing and accepting that life is short. Ticking by. Shorter for some than others. But realizing that soldiers die, infants leave the earth way way too early in some cases than any of us would like.

Death is not something to be feared. Death is part of life.

The cemetary markets help us keep it all in perspective. As you visit a Maine cemetery or any I would guess, you see a car with the trunk open and a widow planting flowers bought for the occasion and carried in that trunk. You think about as a kid that that lady is without her mate, her husband but life goes on. This is what you do to not forget the person, but maybe to remember them, honor them.

     I would notice another fresh grave near one our regular visits and think, someone else I did not know must have died recently. Right on time, nothing we control. Something we take in stride. Follow in the local Houlton Pioneer Times or Bangor Daily News obituaries.

     Over in another section, a grounds keeper is mowing a section, a back hoe in another region is preparing for a grave side service. In still another region like the spot where Joseph Houlton the town founder is buried, dates and times are being written down by a historian or another grave site is studies by a family member looking for clues, doing genealogy. As an adult visiting my own parent's grave, and now with the four kids off to college and on with life, I have a sense of peace and the beauty of the setting  of our local cemeteries that are so well kept, that offer tremendous views and picture book settings.

     It seems others before me, and after me will carry on the tradition of cemeteries to honor and remember the dead. In Ludlow Maine, high on a hill and visiting another of my dad's relative's graves another memory.

     And even fixing the old grave stone tablet of a revolutionary war general Cummings buried there with my dad, my oldest daughter Elizabeth part of the respect you extended family you would never know in person.

     I hope my kids carry on the tradition and learn not to fear death. And to remember talks we had, history we learned from these field trips to local graveyards in Houlton Maine.

Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers