The quiet Yost Cemetery sign beckoned to me to turn in and visit. Perhaps I would hear old stories whispering in the wind. I did not anticipate the real stories I would soon hear.

It is an old cemetery with leaning eroded headstone with the names long eroded away, adjacent to new headstones.

As I wandered about I was soon joined by a local woman. A happy chatting woman jumped out of her car; she was there for the cemetery work party. She walked around laughing and chatting looking for her husband. “Where’s my husband? I’ve lost my husband,” she kept repeating, “His name is Smith.” I think she wanted me to join the scavenger hunt looking for her husband but I was too bewildered to join in. She doesn’t know where her husband is buried? After a bit of time others arrived and then we heard her cheerfully announced that she had found her husband. It was all laughs because he wasn’t buried under his gravestone. She had his ashes at home. Another woman joined us chatting and explained that she had her ex-husband’s ashes at home too. If she were to spread his ashes at his happy place she said it would have to be at a bar.

I was invited to stay and join their work party, but I declined. I wish I had stayed to help; what other stories might I have heard?