I've been visiting this gravesite at the Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California, for as long as I can remember, well over fifty years, once or twice a year when I was younger for Ching Ming and other occasions, less as I've gotten older. So, I know this tombstone, but I never really read it until my Aunt Millie asked me to help translate the Chinese words.
I know the names of my Uncles and Aunts etched here in granite, in both English and Chinese. If I had bothered, I would have seen the name of our family village in Chinese (Toisan, Luk Chun, Char Jew Village) and that they were members of the 25th generation (to live in Luk Chun). I had completely overlooked the poetic couplet between their English and Chinese names or perhaps ignored them as indecipherable. Yet a poem like this is rare on both Chinese and English gravestones.
寶骨悲留千古地
家身慘掛萬年墳
Precious bones sadly remain in the earth for eternity
The family tragically hangs over the grave for ten thousand years
