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A Trip To Lakeside Cemetery Canon City Colorado

I love going for walks in cemeteries. And have all my life.  For some that makes me creepy.  To sister and brother taphophiles, a walk through a cemetery is as normal as a walk around the neighborhood.  The residents of this graveyard community have stories to tell.  And mysteries to share – the mystery that surrounds the dash between their birth year and their death year.  Who were they in life?  What were their hopes and dreams?  What adventures did they have?  What tragic circumstances surrounded those that died prematurely?  Sometimes those puzzles are resolved by considering the tombstones that share a last name and death date.  A mother who died in childbirth?  Possibly – especially during the early centuries of our country.  The epidemics that swept through communities besieged by poor water supplies and lack of nutritious food?  Some ambiguities will never be unraveled.   

Recently I had a few extra minutes in my day and decided to visit Lakeside Cemetery in Canon City.  Lakeside is one of three cemeteries in this small Colorado town known as “The Corrections Capitol of the World (nine state and four federal prisons, including Supermax, are situated in and around Canon City.)  At first just wandering among the headstones, watching the deer graze, enjoying the peace that cemeteries hold and beholding the various grave markers.  Large, ornate monuments of prominent and wealthy citizens of the community.  The easily recognizable white marble headstone of a deceased veteran of the Navy, Air Force, Army, Marines or Coast Guard.  Some headstones emblazoned with the deceased’s fraternal organization such as the Masons, Order of Eastern Star or the Woodmen of the World.

I was getting back in my vehicle, ready to head to my meeting when I happened to glance down and found a plaque next to a headstone.

 

   

WOW! Joseph B Smith was a veteran of the US Civil War!  I don’t know what I found it surprising that veterans of the US Civil War would be buried in CO but I did.  Not only had Mr. Smith served during the Civil War but he was OLD even by today’s average.   If you don’t do math, he was 102 years old when he left this realm.  At the time of Mr. Smith’s death not only was he the last remaining Civil War veteran in the county he was one of the three oldest people in Colorado.  His life spanned too many wars (Mexican War, Civil War, Spanish-American War, WWI, and WWII) and several major historic events (the sinking of the Titanic, The Great Depression, The San Francisco earthquake, and the advent of cars and planes)

The dash

So, who was Mr. Smith in life?   He was born November 25, 1842, in New York.  At 19 he enlisted on June 10, 1862, with Company C, of the 5th New York Artillery.  His unit had 12 pieces in place at Gettysburg during Pickett’s Famous charge.  In November, he was a guard only a few yards away from the platform where President Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address.  Mr. Smith is quoted in the Canon City Daily Record saying “My recollection of President Lincoln is his extreme height and his gangling arms that seem to almost reach his knees.  It seems to me that he walked with a slight limp.”  Mr. Smith spent the last part of the war in Libby Prison.  He remembered conditions in the prison were horrible. Week after week prisoners would only get a four-square-inch piece of corn bread each day.  The South didn’t have food for their Confederate soldiers let alone the Union prisoners.  Joseph was released April 1, 1865, 8 days before General Lee surrendered.  Mr. Smith saw General Lee on the day he was taken prisoner stating “He was the finest looking man I ever saw.  The union forces had great respect for General Lee and he was a fine soldier as well as a gentleman”.  During World War II it was said that Mr. Smith would walk unassisted to purchase War bonds.

You never know who you will meet in the cemetery. Or what you’ll learn.  

Meet the Author: Susan Coffey

I'm a Colorado native with a passion for history.   Honored to be working in the sacred domain of deathcare, supporting families caring for their loved ones, educating folks on their choices and helping folks put a plan in place for after they die (a truly loving gift for those left behind).  

Visit Susan's Page:  Biz:  going-myway.biz.

One Simple Step to Integrating Loss in Your life

One Simple Step to Integrating Loss, Endings, or Death into Your Life Right Now

Life, it could be argued, is loss made manifest. From the moment a child is born, there are moments of loss – loss of who they were as a baby, a toddler, a young teenager. It continues into older age, with loss of interest in what fascinated us when younger, loss of energy for some, loss of physical capacity for others.

Not to mention the myriad other losses of material things as we change and grow.

So it makes sense to come to terms with loss. Because when you find it difficult to accept a loss, it means you are attached to whatever has been lost, and when that happens, you are unable to fully live in the moment, let alone have a future.

Death is the biggie, of course. When someone or something dies, there will always be loss. How could there not be? It’s easy to see the presence of loss when a person dies, but perhaps not so easy to see when it is the death of something else.

Less apparently severe things like a project that didn’t work out, a dream that became impossible, a change in circumstance that involved giving up on a desire – these are examples of loss that are not always easily integrated into our lives by any means.

Here’s a list of different kinds of losses or deaths; see which ones have impacted your life:

• Death of a loved one (person or pet)
• Loved one has illness/diagnosis
• Kids leaving home (empty nest)
• Forced to move house
• Losing a business partner
• Career change causing confusion
• Divorce and/or separation
• Ending of a relationship in whatever manner
• Failure of any kind
• Loss of fertility
• Loss of innocence
• Loss of a country
• Loss of family members
• Developing a disability or ill health
• Loss of an older person to dementia or Alzheimer’s
• Loss of belongings (as in a disaster of some kind)
• Loss of vitality (as in getting older)
• Loss of potential
• Loss of mobility (as in having to give up driving license)

Think about this as widely as possible; when I started to do this, I was amazed at the amount of losses in my life that had actually shaped how I have lived.

I invite you to create a timeline of your life and chart the losses on it, to see how that looks. Then consider how well you have coped with these endings.  This simple step will help you begin to integrate them all into your life today.

When you do that, you’re coming to terms with loss in it’s greatest sense, and seeing how you manage with the little losses. That makes it much easier to cope better with the bigger ones – like death of a loved one.

If you’re concerned at all about how you manage endings, deaths, losses – whatever you want to call them – reach out and join my Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/beforeIgo/ where there’s an opportunity to talk with others about all kinds of things to do with end of life matters. For instance, when your pets die – we recently had a fascinating thread about that; currently there’s another conversation happening about people’s stories re an afterlife.  I look forward to meeting you there!

Jane Duncan Rogers runs http://www.giftedbygrief.com, where she helps people prepare well for a  good end of life, encouraging them to get their end of life and after life wishes taken care of by completing her workbook Before I Go: Practical Questions to Ask and Answer Before You Die. 

POW! Cemetery Guns!

We posted a short post regarding the cemetery gun and other devices invented to stop attempts at grave robbing. Found a very interesting blog with an image of an actual device.

Cemetery Guns! Who Would Have Thought!!!

Dialaog of Death

When did we stop talking about death?  When did we stop accepting it as a fact of life? Instead we speak of it in hushed voices or avoid the subject all together. It is as  if somehow we can make it go away, until we find ourselves disconnected from the entire processing of death and dying.

We need to take a page from the lives of our grandparents and great grandparents.  Our ancestors held the title of best in show for their practices of death and mourning during the Victorian period. Maybe it was due to following the fashion of the reigning royal of Europe, Queen Victorian, who was in and out of perpetual mourning from 1861 until her death in 1901.

Adhering to the correct practices in observing the passing of a loved one, was so important, chapters in etiquette books were dedicated to this very subject, from the fashions worn, to the décor of the home. As with most things during the Victorian period, opulence and going over the top were the rules more than the exception and that applied to death and everything associated with  it.

Today when a love one dies, many find it difficult to take time off of work to plan and attend the funeral, little along processing through the mourning period.

In the Victorian age, there were prescribed times of mourning-for women- 2 years and a day. As psychologists examine this today, two years are equal to what most look at as the time to process the death of a loved from. From denial to anger to acceptance. Today everything is so rushed and quickly to be done with, so the person can move on and get on with their lives.

During the Victorian era, death was very much a part of everyone’s lives. From incurable diseases for to the high rate of child and infant mortality, death could easily be a daily occurrence if not in your immediately family then with your friends and neighbors. Families took care of their own dead, from preparing the body, to even making the coffin.Funerals were often held in front parlors of homes. Family members would sit with the dead, day and night until the funeral.

Today those tasks once the responsibility of the families have since been placed in the hands of strangers at local funeral homes.

It is not morbid to think of death, plan for death of yourself or a loved on. On the contrary it demonstrates how important they are to you, by taking the time to plan their wishes, not what you are able to afford, or are manipulated into due to guilt.

Death like birth is a part of life. But so many people don’t want to discuss it, as if it is almost taboo. To plan for your death is considered morbid. This is a topic that we have discussed over and over, how to begin the dialog of planning for death.

 Its time we honor those who are our mothers, fathers, grand parents and children It is time for us to educated ourselves in the care of our own dead.

 

Explosive ways to prevent premature disinterment

Cemetery Guns and Grave Torpedoes

 To prevent scavenging by man or beast explosive booby traps were used and could be triggered with tripwire or by wrenching open the coffin.  The practice was banned in the 1820s in Britain, afterwards the less lethal mortsafes were turned to to keep the freshly departed safe in their tombs.


http://www.guns.com/2012/08/06/cemetery-guns-grave-torpedoes/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortsafe

What Is Liquid Cremation and Why Is It Illegal?

Kaline hydrolysis, also known as liquid cremation or water cremation or bio-cremation—is currently legal in only 8 U.S. states. Despite being one of the cheapest and most environmentally-friendly forms of dealing with a cadaver, it is not an option for most of us.

http://gizmodo.com/what-is-liquid-cremation-and-why-is-it-illegal-1696897615