Reaching Across from the Grave

A married couple of the town of Roermond in the Netherlands are forever separated by cemetery walls. According to Varik and Church Records of the 17th Century,

In 1842 a twenty-two year old Catholic woman of nobility (J.W.C. van Gorkum) married a colonel in the Dutch Cavalry. He was not of nobility and was Protestant as well. That must have been the scandal of the century in Roermont. However, the marriage had lasted almost forty years, when the colonel died. Eight years later the woman past away also. She had refused to be laid to rest in the family's large tomb and, instead, had ordered the monument that you can still see today. She lies on one side of the wall, he on the other, still holding hands.

Apparently, while the church had rules about who gets buried where, there were no hard and fast rules about such monuments. Link  -via TYWKIWDBI


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Roer is a river called Rur in my town, just a few kilometers away from Roermond on the German side. "Mond" means "mouth", not "mont" = hill. The whole area is a catholic enclave both in the Netherlands and Germany.
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Awesome.

Despite the spelling in the Reddit-post, it's actually "Roermond". I'm also sure that it has always been this way despite the fact that older spelling cóuld have been with a "t", because the latter part comes from the Latin "mundium"

Source: "http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roermond_(naam)"
It's in Dutch, but you can deduct it from the second paragraph.
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