I wept through most of a recent celebration of life for a woman I didn’t really know. Betty Beach’s family are members of United Christian Church, and as church congregations do, we helped organize the service honoring and remembering this woman most of us hadn’t known before the disease, which we all dread, took her.

It was a lovely service: someone sang her favorite song, poems were read, stories told. Her son spoke of his mother and played the violin she’d pressed him into learning as a child. There were Swedish hymns, a long-lost relative, and afterwards a Swedish smorgasbord for lunch, including the cardamom-flavored bread Betty’s husband had baked that morning.

The Beach family showed us how to do it, one church member said afterwards.

But why did that particular family’s expression of love and grief affect so many of us who hadn’t known her before? I’m not the only one who teared up Saturday. When a brother who’d died young was mentioned it was my own lost younger brother who came to me. When a friend sang one of Betty’s favorites – “The First Time I Saw Your Face” – an image of Wally’s blue eyes looking into mine brought more tears.

“How many funerals have we seen in that church?” one woman asked afterward.

Wakes. Viewings. Funerals. Celebrations of Life. Graveside services. Scattering of ashes. A blow-out of a party. I could write a book.

I had to move to Maine to experience them all. Or maybe I just had to get old. I must have had a charmed childhood, but have absolutely no memory of going to a funeral. Perhaps my family just didn’t do them, as my grandparents just sort of slipped away, here one day and neatly tucked under the ground the next. Ditto with my parents, both of whom died in Maine.

My brother and I buried their ashes with our grandparents in the cemetery in Illinois, carrying the cardboard boxes with our luggage.

The one truly traumatic funereal event I remember pre-Maine was standing in a line that snaked around the block to offer condolences to a 21-year-old classmate whose twin sister had been murdered in her bed.

I was blissfully unaware of the real trauma suffered by my birth family, people I wouldn’t meet until I was 46 – the premature deaths of my mother, a brother, a sister, and their father. I was shocked to learn that my mother’s grave was unmarked. Not long after we all met (mostly via phone by the way), the remaining siblings got her a stone in the Arizona cemetery where she was buried in 1965.

I have to admit that though I have a small plot in Maplewood for Wally and I, there’s still no stone for him. His ashes, though, are nourishing a wild tangle of a perennial bed in the middle of our vegetable garden. Apparently, it’s not unusual for a family to have a plot and a stone in a cemetery, but no body, no ashes. Lost at Sea some of them read, but more recently ashes have been scattered in some favorite spot not in the cemetery.

My own children grew up with a grittier, more graphic view of death than I’d had. Wally’s several elderly aunts, a step-father, and his mother were dying in Augusta during the 70s and 80s, and each involved a viewing. I’d never seen a dead body; our little boys saw a few by the age of 5. A viewing or “visiting hours” at the funeral home involves greeting the mourning family and going up to the open coffin to see, for the last time, a great aunt or grandmother. The dead are so still.

Perhaps my sons have no memory of those times; perhaps they do.

Three of my grandchildren were in the room when Wally drew his last breath. They popped in and out all the next day, the oldest cutting out paper hearts for him, the youngest plainly curious, the middle one, who’d already faced cancer himself, wary. We waited to call the funeral home until I had said to him all the words I had and could finally let him go.

There was a funeral at the church. I have almost no memory of it, a mere six years ago. Other people tell me about it sometimes.

Many, perhaps most, deaths are commemorated in other ways these days. Since families are likely to be scattered all over the place, the deceased are remembered “at a later date”. Generally, here in Maine, that means some time in the summer.

Back in the day, before cremation and the convenient storage of a small (generally 6” square) cardboard box, bodies were kept in some form of cold storage (way back, it would be a crypt-like structure in the cemetery) to await burial after the ground thawed. When young Murray French died in the winter of 1957 at the age of 21 in Ohio his parents, along with his brother and his best friend, had to wait for spring to make the sorrowful trek to Maine to bury him in Maplewood Cemetery.

The friends and family of my neighbor, Richard Glock (who died in November) gathered in his backyard last month to share stories about their quiet friend and father. Even for those of us who’d known him for 20 years (and he was our next-door neighbor) heard for the first time that he had a doctorate, that he'd been a high school football star, and that he was a supporter of dozens of good causes. Along with some hilarious stories delivered by his four adult children.

These delayed celebrations of life, often held months or more after a death, are a chance for siblings, gathering in Maine on a summer day, to tell each other the stories of their parent. The first raw grief has softened, acceptance is settling in, and the realization comes that these siblings are on their own now. A bittersweet time.

Funerals are as unique as the individual who is the center of it all: the deceased. Here are a few Lincolnville ones that I remember.

1980: Ty Long, the son of Alice and Winfield Long, died at the age of 60. Ty, the only offspring of his aging and ailing parents, was buried in a simple ceremony at Youngtown Cemetery. Alice was at home on Beach Road, too ill to attend. And Win, at 88, had been a WWI fighter pilot; he watched from a car, too sick (or too devastated?) to get out and stand at his son’s grave.

1982: Myra Polan insisted there be no services for her. With no family to speak for her, it was up to her many friends. Her ashes were delivered to me, per her wishes, my first encounter with the small cardboard box. I called two other friends to go with me and, grabbing Danny Pendleton along the way, we went to her house on North Chester Dean Road. Danny dug the hole (under the same tree where Myra, alone and telling no one, had buried her husband, Lou, a few years earlier) and we dumped in the contents of the box. A few weeks later dozens of Myra’s friends brought champagne and food to her garden, popped corks into her blooming lilacs and remembered.

1993: Hermeana – Hoppi to her friends – Graham had moved from Massachusetts to what I believe was the oldest house in the area some ten or fifteen years earlier. It sat on a long, narrow piece of land that stretched back from Atlantic Highway just a ways past the Lincolnville line in Northport.

Up behind her house she worked in what she called her quiet garden. When she died, we friends gathered in the garden to remember her in a special way. We brought shovels and pails and dug up her garden. MBNA’s purchase of that long skinny acreage made possible their Point Lookout project. Before long the house had been demolished and huge buildings were erected where Hoppi had once gardened. I for one have an arbor of her Elizabeth grapes, and a brilliant blue-flowering ground cover –creeping speedwell – to remember my dear friend.

The 1990s-2000s: The old Meeting House, or United Christian Church as it is today, became the go-to place for community funerals. Some of them were for church members, but many were not. Everyone in town it seems came out for John Pottle, and a few years later, for his wife, Ruth, for Keryn and then Sally Laite, for the Slegonas who had a single service for Frank, Cyrene, son Albert and son-in-law Arnold Fuchs.

A Russian Orthodox funeral for Nick Turkevich complete with incense and chanting, and a few years later for his wife Betty. For Dana Snowdeal, lost so young as was his brother, Scott.  For Bessie Dean, Bernice Calderwood, Lucille and Edgar Allen, Ruth Felton, Margaretta Thurlow, Karen van Allsberg, Lucy Heald and later her Fred.

2003: Ruth Thurlow’s graveside service, usually a brief affair, filled the Hillside or Upper Cemetery with townspeople. As per her family’s wishes there would be no funeral for Ruth, so the most was made of the graveside committal, including music, hymn-singing, and a proper remembrance of this modest woman who had been a stalwart member of UCC her whole life.

At the end, Pastor Susan Stonestreet gave out two pieces of yarn (Ruth was a prolific knitter) to each mourner – one to drop in her grave and one to take home. Everyone – men and women – lined up, taking the yarn and solemnly following directions, one piece in the grave, the other in a pocket.

2015: Bill Roesing, my brother, had a full-on funeral in Washington, D.C., where he’d lived out his career, including a reception at, ironically, his favorite pub. Newt Gingrich, a colleague of his, spoke of their work together for the Republican party, even as my nephew nudged Wally and I, whispering that we should speak up. Wisely, we didn’t. Months, maybe a year or two later, we – my sister-in-law, nephew and two nieces – sat on the rocks at Ducktrap, our favorite family picnic spot, and tossed his ashes into the waves.

2022: Just this past Saturday, as Betty Beach was being remembered, the field across from Rick Greeley’s was filling up with cars for those gathering to celebrate his life, cut short suddenly just a few weeks ago.

Watching the endless procession of Queen Elizabeth’s hearse, down a highway through Great Britian, her elaborately decorated coffin visible through the glass vehicle I think of the simple ways we say good-bye to our loved ones.

We do it with stories, photo collages, prayers, and music, with deviled eggs and cups of coffee homemade cookies and balloons, sometimes very publicly, and sometimes in silence and solitude.

School

Lincolnville Central School opened last week with 200 students in grades k-8. Two new staff members are Molly Paul, Ed Tech and Heidi Russell, Occupational Therapy. Kayla Carpentier joins as Custodian working with Tim Clark. And in the kitchen Seth Cohn is the new Kitchen Assistant. Two staff members vie for longest tenure: this will be school Secretary Marie Pierce’s 34th year along with Technology Coordinator Valerie Bemis who has been with LCS at least as long.

If you have a child or grandchild in LCS be sure to check out the weekly Lynx newsletter for upcoming events, good tips on navigating these growing up years, and notice of special programs available for kids and families in the area.

Lincolnville Improvement Association 

Thursday, September 15 at 5:30 p.m., the LIA will host its September meeting at the Tranquility Grange on Route 52. Come enjoy this historic building, a delicious potluck supper, and a great presentation you definitely won’t want to miss. This month will be the annual meeting highlighting TALES OF LINCOLNVILLE”S PAST. Stay tuned to hear stories from folks who have spent a lot of time in Lincolnville over the years and who have some good stories to tell.  

Come learn more about our town and enjoy meeting up with friends, neighbors and Lincolnville visitors. Everyone is welcome! Please bring something to share for the potluck. Drinks will be provided.  The LIA is delighted to be able to use the Grange for our 2022 meetings while the Beach Schoolhouse is being restored. 

Lincolnville Center Indoor Flea Market

A full house of vendors will be offering a wide array of merchandise this Saturday, Sept. 17, 8 a.m. to noon, including antiques, handcrafts, artwork, and seasonal decorations such as Cinderella pumpkins, broom straw, and Chinese lanterns at the Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road. United Christian Church members will be selling sweet and savory baked goods: fruit breads, muffins, scones, cookies, breakfast casserole and quiche galore, all packed for take-out. This is not your ordinary flea market.  It's an emporium of curiosities and deliciousness, all at. Come and check it out!  All welcome.  The event is sponsored by the United Christian Church (UCC). Masks are recommended.

Another History Query from Corelyn

Lincolnville’s most intrepid and resolute historian, Corelyn Senn has another question for readers:

“I am looking for information on Hay Scales as a business in the mid 1800s in Lincolnville. I know of two scales: one was at the corner of Rt 1 and McKay Road and was owned by John C. Perry and the other was in the Center, perhaps where the telephone building is today, and may have been owned by John Young 2nd. Hay scales had their own building and used balance scales hung from a beam. Did farmers drive up with a load of hay and carry in a pitchfork full to put in a pre-weighed container or did they bring it in in their own container. How did this work? Was it preordered or did they bring a wagon full and sell it off? Did the scale owner get a portion of the sale? Any information on this whole process would be much appreciated.”

The last time Corelyn asked us for help, then identifying a harbor structure in an old photo she was contacted by a local fellow with all kinds of interesting information.

Speaking of Memorials

A memorial service for Jacqueline “Jackie” A. Taylor, formerly of Lincolnville, and who passed on March 18, 2022 will be held on Saturday, September 17, 2022 at 12:30 pm at the Vesper Hill Children’s Chapel, Rockport, Maine.  A reception will follow immediately after at the Inn at Ocean’s Edge, 24 Stonecoast Road, Lincolnville, Maine, 04849.