I have a fascination with graveyards and old memorials and commemorative plaques, not to be morbid but to wonder about past lives. So often there is a story behind the inscription and sometimes little biographical notes tell us something about the person who is being remembered. So wandering in the Kingston Cometary in Portsmouth, I glanced at the various gravestones and markers. I was in search of the Polish memorial, but there was a Jewish cemetery which I looked at, knowing some of my ancestors who had relatives who lived in this area.
Then I came across a grave, marking the resting place of Mary Dimmer, beloved wife of George who had sadly died young, at the age of thirty-three. On the back of the memorial stone was the inscription to Emily Dimmer, beloved wife of George who had died in 1887, aged twenty-one… What a great misfortune for George, to lose two wives at such a young age… but why on Emily’s grave was the inscription ‘Yes! Yes!’?
Lois Elsden 