Lost and Found

So on we went to Tiverton, where we found just what we were looking for...
(Which would be the graves of Donald McDonald and Annabella Black, Annabella's mother, Jessie Black, and a couple of children.)
...and a couple of things we weren't looking for. Like this grave that lists another Donald McDonald - grandson of the other one. And on the back, family history information proving he's a relative. This was so cool to find.
But if you go back around to the front of this headstone, you notice that this Donald McDonald had two kids who only have birth dates. No death dates. Hmmm...
So we went to the library across the street, and the librarian in this little tiny town said, "Oh, ya, they're in the care center over in Kincardine." Wahoo!
So off to Kincardine to find some long lost cousins.
One problem.
Their wing of the care center happened to be in quarantine. Some respiratory virus was going around, and no one was allowed in or out.
Drat.
But a nurse showed me to Donald's window. (Another Donald McDonald. It really wasn't a very cool name in the first place. I don't know why these people have insisted on hanging on to it for so many generations.)
Well, Donald's wife had died many years before, and he never had any children. His sister, Maggie, in a room across the hall, never married. So they are the end of their line, and they weren't expecting visitors until Thanksgiving.
So of course they didn't have their hearing aids in that day. (Because they weren't expecting visitors.) And so I had to stand in the flower bed outside Don's window and scream at him. The poor man couldn't figure out why some strange woman was standing outside his window.
And what is she trying to say? I wish she'd speak up.
I finally managed to communicate who I was and why I was there, and he and his sister were very excited to meet us. We promised to come back the next day, and they promised to have their hearing aids in.
The next day Jef stuck a chair in the flower bed for me so that I could scream in comfort.
Then he went and took a picture. How helpful.
Maggie couldn't figure out how she ended up with cousins in Utah. I told her that my grandfather moved to Utah when he joined the Mormon church, but I don't think that meant anything to her, because a few minutes later she was asking, "And we don't know why your grandfather moved to Utah?" And a few minutes after that, "And your grandfather moved for some reason that no one understands?"
The third time I just agreed with her. Yup. Haven't a clue.

And here they are. They were very sweet, even if they're not very photogenic.
They kept talking about things we should see or do "when we come back next year." But I really don't think they'll be there next year, even if we did come back.
Maggie has lots of family history information, obviously much more than I have, but it's all in storage who knows where. So we left our address with an explanation of who we were, so that hopefully it will fall into the right hands someday and that information will eventually make it to me. Maggie promised to send it to me as soon as she got out of there, so maybe she will. It wouldn't be the first time I've had help from the other side.