I have to say, if the stone's carver was able to maintain the updated inscription for Zilpah's death date and interment 26 years after her husband passed on, his matching the first inscription's style is exceptional. Of course, the whole stone might not have been a permanent carving until Zilpah's death (and the whole thing was done at once); I assume either the place of Joel's burial was kept in close mind until then (if there was a small marker, or none at all, where his body was buried in 1826), if that was the case.

Regardless of the final burial of Zilpah being a hundred and sixty years ago or someone alive today, it's awful thinking that a happily married couple could be split long before one or the other died, leaving a widow or widower for twenty or thirty years alone. My grandmother lost her husband (my grandfather, who died long enough ago that I never met him in life; he died four years before I was born) in similar circumstance, and lived another thirty years without him with her in person by her side. I know she loved my Da (her only son), my brothers and I, and eventually my brothers' wives and her one great-grandson (whom she lived to see become a young man, I might add), and I never felt she focused on being bereft of her husband. I think the only thing worse than that for most parents to contemplate, is outliving a son or daughter; which, sadly, happens more often than seems fair as well.

Death is not choosy, and fate is not predictable, not most of the time. Decession can come from illness, accidental injury, death or injury leading to death in combat, or a woman in childbirth, a botched surgical procedure, or simply a natural lifeline that wasn't meant to be as long as another person's. We can only strive to make of what time we have that we are given, as all living things are, and be good to each other for the duration of it.

-2Paw.