The Nun in My Backyard

Today I have a guest author, my daughter Melissa. She wrote this short piece while in school in Lincolnshire, Illinois. The topic is quite unusual, and though we never saw a ghost, the unknown history of the person "buried" in our backyard haunted us and remained a mystery for the seventeen years we lived there.

My dad is really into gardening and making our yard look as impressively green as possible. One spring afternoon at least a decade ago, he was out in the foliage, weeding and raking away the victims of the winter when he found something out of the ordinary. A cross-shaped gravestone marked, “Sister Fabia Fisch February 28, 1892.”

After talking to our elderly neighbor, we found out that the story goes as follows: his sons came home with the marker years ago. They “found” it somewhere. My dad suspects that the stone may have been replaced because the cross style headstones often break at the base. It could have been anywhere when the neighbor boys found it, however, they brought it home, stuck it along the lot line in our back yard, and left it there. Now, my dad weeds around it and tries to keep it looking respectful.

For years, we wondered if there perhaps was a person buried in our back yard. My childish imagination came up with numerous stories explaining the mysterious stone, one of them even explaining that it was a beloved pet fish buried there (you have to expect a young girl to think that based off the name alone). For fun, my dad looked up her name online to see if he could find out anything about who she was. Within the past year, a site was established that has pictures from Maria Immaculata cemetery in Wilmette, Illinois.

Apparently there is a convent with a cemetery where they bury their nuns. There, a new headstone replaces the one lost years earlier.  He also found out that her sister was there as well. Her name was Sister Concordia Fisch. She was two years older, but lived to be 90, unlike Sister Fabia Fisch who only lived to be nineteen.

The Internet is an incredible tool, helping people everywhere find information on long lost nuns thought to be buried in their back yard.

Note from Vic: I have reached out several times to email addresses listed for the convent, but have yet to receive any information in return. I suspect they are very private people but there is a story here, mostly likely a sad one, and we'd love to know more about these early residents of Illinois. Their lives began shortly after the Civil War, and in the case of Sister Concordia, ended when I was five years old.

😎

If you like fiction and you're in the mood for over 50 short stories, please consider buying "Natural Selections," at Amazon.com.

Or if you'd prefer seventy non-fiction stories inspired by a town in Illinois, please consider buying Park Ridge Memories also on Amazon. Click on the image below.