Funny that the
Union-Leader should have an article yesterday about Interstate I-93, that was:
1) widened, but jogged around
a cemetery for three horses (!),
2) but dug up an entire human cemetery within the year to widen the Interstate to the airport!
3) nearby Rochester Planning Board this year approved a Ramada Inn 25-feet from another cemetery. (Although a tree-lined buffer had been cut down by the latest seller of the property).
A similar scenario is being played out in my very back yard! (New owner/realtors vs. Old owners).
4) New owner/realtors sold off a late 1700s family cemetery (surname:
Tibbett) to lakefront newbies, who are building an addition near it. The tombstones are misaligned (some were removed from the ground and propped-up against others), and some very large trees are growing right in the middle of the cemetery.
5) The same new owner/realtors have been shuffling a tombstone around — leaning it against one building or another — for several years. It is 48-inches tall, marked with an 1800's date, and was previously inserted about 18-inches into the soil. (Just
where...is anybody's guess). This matriarch's tombstone has the same surname as the prior, long-time owners of the property (surname:
Horn).
To this day, this tombstone has no home: ("I ain't got no body?")
6) Both of the recently-deceased owners' ashes were spread over their hard-worked land. Perhaps they knew best.
In this modern, bulldozed, New Hampshire — the only
permanent gravesite is the spreading of ashes, and the
memories that go with it.