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We've been away on a nice little trip to Chicago and points north, partly to celebrate our 26th anniversary and partly to please the genealogist in me.  For years I've wanted to visit Bohemian National Cemetery to see and photograph the graves of my father's family who are buried there.

Bohemian National is a huge cemetery taking up 122-acres on Chicago's north side, founded in 1877 and still going.  I knew that my grandparents are both there, as well as their twins who died in infancy, and one of my great-grandmothers.  A nice woman in the cemetery office looked up where these people were, gave us maps and directions, and sent us on our way.  My partner was brilliant in reckoning locations.

Grandma Knez's ashes are in the Masaryk Memorial Mausoleum, and we found and photographed the niche front that bears her name and dates.  My grandfather and the babies have no headstones, but we determined where they had been buried because of the other relatives buried in the same plots who did have markers.  My grandmother's mother, Ludmila Melka (1866-1919), has a headstone, which I photographed, but then I got a real bonus by finding this one:

The inscription reads:

MARIE KNĚZ
zem.21.list.1912
v stáří 57 roků
Spi sladce drahá matko



When I got home and checked dates, I was able to confirm that this was my other great-grandmother, Grandpa Knez's mother.  It says she died on 21 November 1912 at age 57 years.

That sentiment at the end (Spi sladce drahá matko) appears on Ludmila Melka's stone also.  I'm glad I didn't get it translated until I got home.  I admit I am a big mush and that sentimental moments tend to puddle me up, and there were plenty of those that afternoon in the cemetery.  If I had been told then that it means "Sleep sweetly dear mother," it would probably have set me to sobbing.