Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

One of the main purposes of our recent trip back East was to visit all the relatives buried in various cemeteries across the North Country of New York State. My mother and stepfather are buried there. So are my grandparents and great grandparents. My only uncle on my mother’s side and all the great aunts and uncles I knew, or knew of as a child, rest in peace too.

Over the weekend, my Aunt Alice, my Uncle Dick, Earl, and I roamed the cemeteries on Tug Hill in Lewis Country amidst a chilling drizzle that cut to the proverbially thin bone. We’d dressed for summer, but she deserted us. Instead, it was as if October had come to scare us away. But we stood against the chill and persevered because we’d all come hundreds and hundreds of miles to make this cemetery pilgrimage. It was now or not, and we were not to be diverted.

In the driving drizzle, we visited the cemetery in Lowville, New York; the one at New Boston; and the one in Copenhagen, finding various special relatives in all places. I revisited my parents’ gravesite; Alice revisited her parents’ site. I was interested too, because I had lived with those parents, as my grandparents, in the early nineteen fifties. In a way it was coming home for both my aunt and me.

We roamed the countryside, talking of how our nineteenth century ancestors walked in from Canada and made their lives in Lewis County. Tradition has it that this part of New York State reminded them of Ireland, and that’s why they settled here. Today, one is unsure what held them, since there are no longer original settlers to tell the tale. Instead, it’s left to hand-me-downs. Which means, we’re equally unsure why we return from time to time, but we do.

Maybe it’s because this is where our lives really began, regardless of where we were born. Maybe it’s because we want to know more about our forefathers and foremothers. Or maybe it’s just because once in a while my aunt and I want to strengthen our own connection by visiting relatives we have in common and silently remembering our legacy to them. Regardless, it was a wonderful day.