My Miracle Year: Bearhead Cemetary

(To the left: my much loved brother Steve) Bearhead Cemetery is in a small plot of pine trees, surrounded by rich dairy land, between the farm towns of Long Prairie and Swanville, MN.

From the first time that my brother and I talked about going back to Minnesota, a mental picture of visiting our mother’s grave played in my head. I’d been there before butSteve never. I envisioned us alone, sobbing out the years of loss together.

In reality, it was something else altogether, more about us paying our respects and honoring her memory.

(To the right: Sierra, Sandy, Jeanie, Olivia & Vicki) I’m thankful that Jeanie (a daughter from my Aunt Rhoda’s second marriage and a ‘new’ cousin) and her husband Kim, with whom we were staying near Minneapolis, decided to come with us to the cemetery – a half hour away -- after the reunion had concluded. With them came Jeanie’s daughter Vicki and granddaughters Sierra and Olivia.

Even though the graveyard is small, it took a while for us to find the Husom plots. Not only is my mother buried there, but my brother Arthur, my Grandma (Doris) and Grandpa (Clarence) Husom, Uncle Harlan (whose obit helped me find my family) and many others including great grandparents and great great grandparents. There are even relatives on my dad’s side buried on another side of the cemetary, my Aunt Violet (his sister) and her husband Tommy; their old farm was only a half mile away.

(Below: my mother's headstone, Shirley Elizabeth Harnack) The graves hadn’t been tended to in some time so Steve and my husband cleaned away the overgrown grass and weeds as best they could. In the end there were no tears, just acknowledgement. And maybe, just maybe, some amount of closure.

My Miracle Year: A Circular World

(Above: Riff Raff, me, Bodhi, Hassan & Buster in Deadwood) On the way to the reunion I laughingly said the high point of the trip for me would be the reunion; for my brother Steve, Deadwood (a raucous and illegal -- it was on Indian land -- frontier town if ever there was one); and for my husband, getting on the plane in Minneapolis to fly home.

In the end, for both Steve and me, the reunion in Swanville, MN, (near Long Prairie) capped all. And my husband bemusedly enjoyed the reunion also; as an only child with 3-4 cousins he’s never met (and at this time has no interest in pursuing), this was his first exposure to relatives mingling, talking and laughing together. It helped that a couple of my girl cousin’s husbands, having married into the family in the past few years, didn’t know anyone either – and they and my husband are all about the same age.

(To the right: Melba, Ruth, Rachel & June) Besides Melba (daughter of my Grandpa Husom’s sister Anna), I met three other first cousins of my mom. Ruth, Rachel and June, daughters of my Grandpa Husom’s brother, Arthur. All three, who are very close, worked in academia and state government and never married; they are still healthy and now happily retired.

It was my fifth cousin David Husom, the photographer I met Googling the name “Husom,” who first told me about them (but wasn’t sure exactly how we were related) and said I should get in touch. Although invited, David couldn’t attend the reunion as he was to be vacationing in Canada that week, traveling through Long Prairie to get there. It’s a circular world.