Fear Factor tonight: one of the contestants, a young woman, mentioned she had never been in a cemetery before.

Struck me as strange. Nobody ever die in your family? Or did you never join the procession to the graveyard?

I have so many memories of cemeteries.

The section where one pair of grandparents is interred, with all the metal arches over the tombstones, covered thick with climbing roses. Most of those are gone now, a testament to modern society's desire to be efficient, and minimize maintenance.

The mountain town cemetery, I think it was Fairplay, with the wrought iron arch over the gate. A few other ghost town graveyards that I have no idea where our parents had taken us. But I remember wandering the old markers. The cemeteries of funerals on both sides of our large families.

It was in my college town that I took to wandering the local cemetery, just because it was there. Seeing the history, the personal dramas recorded for all time. Or at least, for as long as stone lasts.

Entire families wiped out by scarlet fever, within a few days or weeks of each other. Babes lost at birth. Parents who outlived their children. The veterans whose plots were bought twice.

Once in cash. First in blood.

So, as the wife and I headed back to the SUV holding the noisy heelers after finding our first geocache, my eyes naturally began to wander.

Wife first noticed this small, insignificant marker.

Don't know who Edgar was, but he had no stone, just his name and life dates on a cheap stand provided by the mortuary. This was not a temporary thing, as Edgar died 20 years ago. Stood and looked at the headstones around him, all the same design, and noticed they all had Edgar's last name.

Checked the dates. And the names.

His wife, and at least of three of their children. But Edgar outlasted them all. When he finally died in his 72^nd year, there was apparently no one left to buy a stone to mark his final resting place.

A father, nearly unnoticed beside the markers of those he had cared for. Presumably to the end.

Across the way, we found a modern headstone, a replacement for two brothers, aged 10 and 12 years, who died in a September blizzard more than a century ago. I remember reading their story, and can best assume it was reiterated at the centennial of their death, maybe seven or eight years ago.

If I remember correctly, one went out into the blizzard to find the other, who was with the family stock.

They were found frozen to death together, and together they still are.

Hadn't noticed before, but our community apparently covers fresh graves with bright green plastic mesh. I assume to hide the bare, brown dirt, but I'm not sure why. The bright plastic is certainly more noticeable than sodded earth. And I rather prefer the sight of bare ground on a fresh grave, and the eventual reclaiming of that scar by the living vegetation.

Just as the scars in the living survivors will be reclaimed, although for some maybe a little more slowly.

The wife knew many of the people in graves under green plastic. And wondered where some others were. One we found was a boy in eldest son's grade, lost in a car accident out of state and brought back home to the town he grew up in.

We commented on how green the grass was this year, because of the rains. As a water conservation measure, the city has not been watering here, and much of the grass was brown last year. They're not mowing often, either, if at all. Another cost-saving measure.

Me, I like it that way. Great-grandparents are in a neglected corner of their cemetery, which I favor over the manicured lawns just over the hill.

But two family plots were not coarsely overgrown. Each closely mown, with near-perfect lines. Wife thought perhaps they had paid for perpetual care, which I suppose is possible.

Myself, I'm hoping there is a relative out there who comes by periodically to tend the plots.

But the grave that touched me the most, and led to my wife and I strolling back hand in hand, was an old one. Over 125 years old. And no one we knew.

Didn't see it at first, a flat stone of white marble, with grass, weeds and windblown silt slowly creeping in to cover the edges. Left alone, the plants would eventually claim the entire marker, as they do flagstones in a lightly used walk.

Wife commented first. The young age of the woman, Mary, just 21 years and 11 months. And guessed she died in childbirth. Then, as we read more closely, we saw that was not the case.

Yes, there was a child, Bell, sharing this grave with her mother. But she lived for six weeks. Her mother died, not at childbirth, but eight days before her daughter.

My mind raced back to the headstones of college. Was scarlet fever here in 1876?

Perhaps.

But it could just as easily been cholera, influenza, or simple infections resulting from a difficult birth. A tipped wagon, or improperly prepared food. So many ways to die back then. So many ways to lose a family.

Mr. Bennet lost his young wife five weeks after the birth of their daughter. And the daughter herself eight days later. How hard that must have been. Was the daughter buried on top of her mother's grave? Or were they kept, frozen, above ground, until the ground thawed in spring, and then reunited and buried together?

No simple engraving on their marker, this stone was ornately carved. It must have been a long winter, and a hard spring.

The wife moved on, back towards the car. After snapping my photo, I set the camera down.

And slowly, carefully picked off all the ingrown grass and weeds. And swept the new dirt off to the edges of the smooth marble with the side of my palm.

Requiessat in Pac, Mary and Bell.