Friday, May 27, 2011

Guidance from above

Last Friday, Jill (my roommate) and I went to 2 cemetaries in SLC to place flowers on my Grandpa Gunner's mother and 2 brother's graves. I had been to the Elysian Gardens where Great Grandma Clark (Grandpa's mother) and Uncle Clive (Grandpa's brother) are buried. We had to wander for a few minutes, but finally found both of their graves and put some roses on them. They we headed across town to the Salt Lake City Cemetary - which I had never been to and didn't even know it existed to be honest. My grandpa's mom had a stillborn son in 1940 and he is buried in this cemetary. When my mom was at the cemetary last, Grandpa walked right to the baby's grave and they couldn't believe he remembered where it was. That was over 20 years ago so I was sure my mom had no idea where the grave was. My mom gave us some very vague directions to find the grave but she was busy and couldn't walk me through finding it. We parked the car and proceeded to explore about a 5 yard wide area that stretches the length of the cemetary (which is about 5 city blocks long) where we knew the baby was buried. They had just mowed the lawn and there was grass covering ALL of the headstones to the point that you couldn't read them at all. I was telling Jill that the headstone wasn't one of the really small ones, as we were wandering. We walked about 10 feet and I said to Jill "The headstone is about this.....oh my hell, this is it!" I was going to show her the size of headstone we were looking for when I saw Wallace's name (Grandpa Gunner's dad) through the grass. I brushed the grass off of it and sure enough, there was the baby's grave! I know that Grandpa Gunner was helping me find the baby's grave because it was always so important to him to visit the cemetaries for Memorial Day. I will definitely return to visit baby Davis' grave and keep grandpa's tradition alive. :)