A Quebec Grave

On a trip in 1991 to find our ancestors south of Montreal, my brother and I and our two sons were combing a certain graveyard where we had already found our main ancestors. 

We came across a grave that absolutely stunned us.

There is a certain serenity in looking through graveyards and reading gravestones for what they tell us about life long ago. And it was in this lighthearted manner that we were prowling through these cemeteries. We first found our earliest known ancestors' graves and found also that they had lived to ripe old ages of 83. Certainly a ripe old age for that day.

But then we came across a grave that we will not soon forget. It was a large grave for a great, great aunt (my great great grandmother's sister). But it was the grave next to hers that stunned us. It was a long stone, perhaps 4 or 5 feet in length and only 2 no more than 3 feet in height. And the top was rounded into four curved tops so that while it was one piece of stone, it looked like four little stones in one.

As we walked closer to this oddly shaped stone, we began to wonder what it could be. Then the horror became clear as we read the names and the dates of death. Four children. All died in 1877. All died in June of 1877. All died within 8 days of one another.

A three year old named Ellen died first on June 6th. Her brother Frank died the next day at age 5. John, aged 10 died 2 days later and finally the infant, Philip died on the 13th. He had just turned one.

We began to imagine what could have happened. A fire? No, they probably would have all died the same day. A person gone berserk? Possible but pretty far fetched. Alas, an all too common explanation for those days. Diphtheria. Influenza. Typhoid. Measles.

Childhood diseases that few children die of anymore in our country at least. It is hard to imagine the horror of that June for that family. I have thought a lot lately about that family, the long sleepless nights. The cries of the children. The whimpering. The helplessness of the adults. The wiping of perspiring brows. The pacing. The waiting. The hoping beyond hope. And I wonder, did John, the 10 year old, know when his 3 year old sister and his 5 year old brother died? Or was he mercifully delirious and oblivious of the death that surrounded him?

Then finally came death. Swiftly. In one week all the children were gone. One son survived only because he was in his mother's womb. Thomas Joseph was born in 1877 several months after that bitter June.

We stood and stared at that tombstone which was really four little tombstones. And the two boys, my son Ryan and my brother's son, Brian, who take great pride in standing up to any Steven King or slasher movie ever made, were visible shaken by these stones and the story they told by their silent witness.

As we looked closer we saw engraving on the front of the base on which the grave stones sat. Carved in what looked like a black basalt rock and overgrown with grass making it very hard to read. We pushed back the grass and there were these words, "Goodbye dear mother and father. We go to prepare a place for you in heaven. While we were with you, we did not belong to you but only to our faithful savior Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, who cares for us now."

There were many other things to see on our trip to the farming area south of Montreal, but this grave stands out in our memory. For when we speak of the valley of the shadow of death, we rarely imagine a week like my great aunt and uncle had in that awful June of 1877. It is hard for us to imagine a valley so deep and dark as that.

And yet, death is death. And grief is grief. And the good Shepherd is the Good Shepherd.