Visit to a Graveyard…

Here it is the 1st day of the 2nd week of August, (though I’m posting this near the end of August) and I’ve been nursing my left eye since the operation for a detached retina back in May-June. It is still a discomfort. Doesn’t hurt all that much, but when I get up in the AM it’s sometimes uncomfortable for 30-40 minutes. Then the rest of the day it’s better, and I keep my eyelid partially or fully closed to lessen the discomfort. Late at night, it’s back to being uncomfortable. I have eye drops I’ve been using for over 3 weeks now since I restarted using them after visiting the optometrist at the VA in Walla Walla, and she recommended doing so. Remember I’d had the surgery done in Tucson. Anyway, I’ve been pretty bored just hanging around the house so today, I went out to start the car in 88F heat and it wouldn’t start, dead battery from sitting so long without being started. So I set up the charger and came back in and checked the service records for when or if I replaced the battery. I did find a date on the battery…4/20…cool, I guess I did replace it in April of 2020, 4 months after I bought the car. So it’s rather new still, and it’s one of those non-serviceable types. But, it took the charge and started the engine so I’ll leave it be for the time being. And get out there to start the car more often.

Once the car was running, didn’t have anywhere in particular to go, I’d originally thought I’d just head to a museum over in Walla Walla that I tried to visit last year but it was closed due to Covid. But with the dead battery problem, I decided I’d just head up the hill outside Milton Freewater and visit the cemetery. Dead Battery – Graveyard…fits somehow.

And it is cool! There are hundreds of pioneer graves up there. Even a few mausoleums. The cemetery was originally built in 1865 so yeah you’d expect there to be old tombstones there. The main road snakes back and forth from one side of the grounds to the other, and I could imagine them starting out as carriage roads as they were pretty narrow and a bit rutted, you can see that from the way what blacktop there is has slumped and conformed to the old ruts. Then the trees all around the grounds are healthy older broad-leaf types, quite tall most of them, so there’s lots of shade, but even then up there it was 101F, so I just drove around with my AC on rather then stepping out of my car. Oldest tombstone I saw from the road was B. 1827! The guy was 38 years old when they built the cemetery in 1865.

While traveling back and forth on the roads, I could see there were many gravestones between the roads that I couldn’t see well as the roads were set pretty far apart, and then there was an interesting mix of dates on the gravestones. Many of the dead were born late in the 1800’s and usually died in the early 1900’s but there were many, sometimes right next to the old tombstones, more modern gravestones. A mix of times.

My family went 36 years without anyone in our two (mom and dad’s) families dying of natural causes. We had one cousin, (5 year old son of the West’s) who drowned at grandma’s Lake Washington lake house during that period so we in the family don’t have much experience with death. Since that period of course, most of the patriarchs have passed on, one every few years. But as a result, I’ve not visited many for burials but do have a fascination with them and have visited, taken pictures, and written about a few I’ve visited while RV’ing though. The Mexican graveyards are the most interesting, FYI. They tend to have these often visited mini-mausoleums dedicated to the dead, with lots of pictures, flowers, food or beer left for the departed.

The property has a very nice view of the Milton Freewater valley in the distance as this cemetery was built on a hill overlooking the valley. It’s due east of where the main section of town was built. It is surrounded by farm land, much of it today was harvested wheat fields but on the south side was a large, bright green corn field. Overall, a very nice peaceful place for the dead. While driving around, a cute little grasshopper hitched a ride on my windshield I suppose to remind me of the fragility of life? Since they only live for one year on average. And 50% get eaten by predators. But I digress.

Plan is to head back and walk around the grounds and take some pictures of the gravestones. Even found an Elam Headstone up there and I and one of my daughters friends are FaceBook acquaintances and she is an Elam so I’ll ask her about it later.

I came back the following Sunday with my camera, and the gate was closed. Found that it’s closed on weekends. Disappointing but I’ll come back on Monday.

Didn’t get to visit at all this trip.

So, on Monday, it was time to head back up to the cemetery. And here we go on the adventure. We start in downtown Milton Freewater, turn off the main street at the funeral parlor & mortuary building (I thought that was fitting) which is right across the street from a church, cross over the old bridge that crosses the river, climb the hill, and enter the gate. Years ago, I imagine that before the mortuary was built mourners would have the task of walking, horseback riding, carriage riding, or driving to the graveyard following the deceased, so I suspect there was always a mortuary of some sort at that corner, or a church, or undertaker. I know that the paved road that exists there now heading up the hill to the cemetery continues on past and goes by several farms, turns west and then after a couple miles turns into a gravel road. The gravel portion looks to be 2-3 miles long so I’ve never continued on it when the blacktop runs out.

And here you can see all the nice broad-leaf trees they planted at the cemetery all those years ago.
Over there, bordering the cemetery is a corn field. All the other fields around it are wheat, which has already been harvested in mid-August. The corn is still growing. 

And then I turned in at the gate. This first area is nearly all flat gravestones and it was hot with no shade so I just stayed in the car.

A couple switchbacks later, start seeing this type.

Wow, born in 1827. Died in 1900. Guy was 73 when he died so a good long life. I wonder how he ended up here in Milton Freewater.

Here’s a cluster of Millers:
This cluster of gravestones and headstones are the Elam family. I know an Elam so it was interesting to me to check them out. You can plainly see the Elam family plot headstone from the road, and it’s clean and in good condition, no flowers though, but what’s strange is that there were several plots around that headstone that were empty. Like they belonged at one time to the Elam family but were never used.

And the newest gravestone is from 1955. So it appears the Elam family did well for themselves here in Milton Freewater and stayed for many years, but then moved on without using the other plots. I have been informed that the graveyard will have documents about them so I may just check that out one of these days. Just out of curiosity. I did inform the Elam that I know about this and her response was, “Interesting” and nothing more. Oh, well.

And there was this older headstone I thought was interesting but I didn’t get a good enough picture of the dates. They were old though.

I have members of my extended family that are ‘Wests’. I wonder if this is a West that is related…which would mean I’m related to them by marriage.

Across the driveway from the West’s are the Church & Talbert’s. These are the only two mausoleum style buildings in the graveyard.

It is peaceful up here on the hill. Like I mentioned, lots of older trees with lots of shade.
There are some sunny areas too. I remember when my mom & dad were buying their plots years ago in Kennewick that the graveyard offered all sorts of options, all for more money of course. Some areas were purposely sunny. I seem to remember them purchasing a couple plots back in the ’50’s but then dad got a new job, oiler at the paper mill at Wallula Gap, and just hated the long drive to & from Kennewick, so we all moved to Walla Walla because it was a shorter, more pleasant drive. When we came over to visit that first time, I remember driving in our non-air conditioned car and several miles from town, we dropped down that long hill outside and west of Touche and the temp dropped like 10 degrees just in a couple miles. Oh, yeah, gimme some of this coolish air I thought.

This was in 1962 or 1963. We rented a house just 4 blocks from the Walla Walla HS so I got to walk to school. They had a business course where teenagers ran a burger and milkshake business right on campus! In the basement of the school. The milkshakes were delicious. It cost like $2 for a burger, fries, and drink as I recall. Which was too rich for my allowance so I’d have a milkshake for $0.50 once or twice a week, and walk home for lunch every day. Pretty sure mom found a way to recoup her money from the Kennewick cemetery. Or maybe not…maybe they still own those plots?

So that’s it. When the weather gets back to cool, I’ll make another trip up there and walk around more instead of staying so close to my AC in the car.

And that’s all about the cemetery, I may visit again. Meanwhile, it’s now very near the end of August and I’ve been to an ophthalmologist a couple times and he found some green weirdness on my cornea and prescribed some magic eye drops, gentamicin sulfate ophthalmic solution, USP 0.3%, and boy did they do the job. Immediate relief. My eye had been uncomfortable, sometimes painful for weeks and the drops just stopped that cold. I can now sit watching TV or something with both eyes open. Don’t need to keep my left eyelid closed at all now if I don’t want to. Still have fuzzy vision in that eye, but I can ‘see’ that it’s getting better. Today, Aug. 25th, may be my last appointment with that doctor. Cool thing is that this med is available at $9/tiny bottle. Whereas the stuff the VA prescribed that didn’t seem to help over several weeks of use was as high as $149/bottle of 1% solution. Only cost me $5 though, ‘cus of the co-pay. Sure glad they finally recently passed a law where the government can negotiate for the best price, just like Walmart.

Thanks for visiting and reading!