There was one really important thing we wanted to do while we were in New Brunswick: find the headstone of the little girl who would have been my husband’s aunt. Her name was Rose Marie, and she died on January 12, 1943 a few weeks after her second birthday.
Perhaps a year ago, while doing some genealogical research, we had come across her death certificate. We also found her name listed on an accounting of all those buried in a particular cemetery in Moncton. And ever since then thoughts of her had stuck with us. We had known about her before this. We had even seen a picture of her years ago. But after having Esmé–or, more precisely, after having almost lost Esmé–this little girl spoke to us. It seemed so important that she be remembered…that she not disappear into history.
So last Friday we set off to the cemetery, hoping that the light drizzle would let up. Instead by the time we’d covered perhaps a quarter of the headstones, it was raining heavily. All three of us were soaked, the freshly cut grass sticking to the wheels of Esmé’s chair and in my flip flops. But we kept looking–even after we had to bring Ez back to the car, I checked the stones right around us while André looked further off.
Many of the headstones were in such terrible states of disrepair that they were completely illegible. Some broken off, the letters worn down on others. There were also a number of metal crosses cast with the words “In memory of” but so many of the replacable plates saying who they were in memory of had disappeared–victims of vandals or the weather. The lines of stones were not exactly regularly spaced and many of the ground plaques were impossible to find–making a systematic search challenging even though the cemetery was small.
We finally had to give up.
And although we had covered the entire grounds as best we could–it was certainly a gallant effort–we were just horribly crushed to not find her and pay our respects in some way. We don’t know when we can go back…we don’t know if by that time any hope of reading her stone–even with better light and more time–would be possible.
I suppose at some point all of us will be left behind by time in this way. But there is something about this person–eternally a child, vulnerable–that we both want so badly to protect. She never had the chance to live to adulthood, make a lifetime of memories, mistakes, and marks on the world.
At least she should be remembered–if not with a proper stone–than here, in this way.
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