I’VE TOURED MANY RURAL CEMETERIES. But never have I seen a grave marker that so saddened me as the one I spotted on the edge of the Emmanuel Lutheran Church Cemetery in Aspelund on Sunday afternoon.
Smaller than the length of my size eight flip flop, the simple slab of concrete tilted barely above the earth. Inscribed thereon, in cursive, was a single word—Baby.
Certainly I’ve seen grave markers of many babies. But this one, because of its minimal size and placement under trees along the cemetery boundary and its simplicity of design, caused me to pause. I am a mother and a new grandmother. And I suppose in the humanity of that, thinking of my own love for my daughters, son and granddaughter, I empathized with the grief of such a loss.
A section of the cemetery that lies next to Emmanuel Lutheran Church and a field.
Aged tombstones, which I assume once stood vertically, are now cemented flat into the ground.
The names reflect the ethnicity of the immigrant families who settled in the Aspelund area.
Dates are missing from the in-ground marker of Hans, whom I believe to be an early immigrant.
A beautiful sheltered gravesite for John and Maren.
Love the immigrant names of Johannes and Engeborg. So poetic.
As I further explored the cemetery—reading the Scandinavian names, studying tombstones and admiring the meticulously kept grounds—I couldn’t shake the image of that baby’s gravestone. Who was he/she? Who were the parents? Why did he/she die?
Next to this list of rules is a graveyard directory, which we couldn’t decipher.
Hoping to find answers on a posted cemetery directory, neither my husband or I could figure out how to match names with platted marker locations. So I left, still wondering about this precious baby buried here beneath trees in rural Goodhue County, Minnesota.
© Copyright 2016 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
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