Saturday, September 10, 2016

Helen


Driving to Maine a few weeks ago our first night happened to be in Lowell, MA, a worn-out mill town outside of Boston.  Purely coincidental, that happens to be where Bill's mother was raised. After a long day of driving in fast traffic and with the car acting funny we sat down to a glass of wine and a delicious dinner.  We were talking about both Lowell and Bill's mother, when I asked Where is she buried?

I never knew my mother-in-law- she was gone long before I came on the scene.  We did share some things, such as being excellent pianists and loving Florence.  She suffered from melancholy and today would probably be diagnosed as having postpartum depression.

After a little internet research we discovered that she was buried only about 5 minutes from our motel, so first thing next morning we headed to the cemetery.  After checking in at the office for the location of the grave, we headed down one of the many small roads of this huge, sprawling burial ground.  No luck-other family members were buried there, but no Helen Bagshaw Myers.  So back to the office we traipsed, where we were given a map with the exact location and told that, yes, there is a gravestone.

Bill began digging with the heel of his shoe at the place where the stone was supposed to be, and voila! he hit something hard.  We searched the trunk of our car for some sort of tool and the best we could find was a metal music stand.  We took turns loosening the sod and moving it, and about 4-5 inches down we found the stone in the photo above.  The lettering was filled with dirt, which we removed with twigs.

It was a bittersweet moment to find that this sad woman's gravestone had disappeared under the sod. What if we had not stopped?  Most likely there is no other family member who would go to this trouble.  And seeing the dates brought back a tragic childhood memory for Bill-his mother died the morning after his 12th birthday, after taking an overdose of sleeping pills the night before.

For both of us I think this unearthing of the stone provided a moment of forgiveness and reconciliation.  We stopped by again on the drive back to MD to see the stone newly set on top of the earth and Helen no longer hidden and forgotten.  Next year we will bring flowers.


1 comment:

  1. Hello - I was looking for some information about my Aunt Helen Bagshaw Myers when I found this on the Internet. My father, Robert Everett Bagshaw, was Helen’s younger brother. I am so grateful that you were able to find Helen’s grave. I haven’t seen my cousin, Bill Myers, since I was rather young. This is Isabelle Bagshaw.

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