It’s only just now occurring to me that Dad‘s love of the song “Waltzing Matilda” might be because his mom’s middle name was Mathilda.

He’d sing over and over:

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong
Under the shade of a Coolibah tree
And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled
“You’ll come a Waltzing Matilda with me”

If you’re not familiar with Australia’s unofficial national anthem, here’s a 1962 recording by Dad’s favorite folk musician, Richard Dyer-Bennett:

Dad told me the only record album he remembers actually wearing out was a collection of folk songs performed by Richard Dyer-Bennett.

Just for fun, here is “Waltzing Matilda” performed as a march:

The reason I’ve got Grandma’s middle name on my mind is because of FindAGrave.com.

Find A Grave is one of the websites that brother Bill teases me about. In general conversation, I’ll bring up something I’ve learned on Facebook’s “Hollywood Page of Death,” which posts about that day’s famous-people deaths and anniversaries of deaths. Of course, the know-it-alls whine endlessly, “I can’t believe you left out their most famous role …”

And then there’s the Dearly Departed Podcast. It’s fun!

Best of all, though, is the “Liza Minnelli Outlives” account on Twitter, which not only covers end of life, but end of careers, Broadway runs, reputations, romance, and more:

Back to the situation with Find A Grave, though …

It’s a Wiki, meaning the resource can be edited by multiple users. Each “memorial page” can be edited by just one individual manager. There’s a way for others to suggest that the manager add information and/or make corrections, so it has that crowd-sourced feel to it.

Find A Grave was acquired by Ancestry.com a while back, so when I’m waltzing around online looking for information and photos to add to our family tree, the occasional gravestone pops up.

The information on both sides of the gravestone is correct. However, when I visited Grandma’s memorial page on Find A Grave, a glaring error stood out.

Sort of.

The person who created the page had performed due diligence in researching Grandma’s middle name, but understandably got it wrong.

Let me explain …

I filled out an online form asking them to correct Grandma’s name to Lucie Mathilda, not Lucie Marie.

A few hours later, a “Request Declined” email arrived. There was an reasonable explanation. Grandma’s “Record Of A Birth” stated her first name was Marie and her middle name was Lucie.

Here’s my theory:

For a long stretch of time, good Catholic mothers and fathers included Mary or Marie in their daughter’s name. Even if it meant for a rather long name.

It must have been when I was in sixth grade, but I remember Sister Mary Says So telling the girls in the class to stand up, which we did. Then she instructed anyone with Mary or Marie in our name to turn and look at the statue of Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

I was the only girl who didn’t turn to look at Mary.

Not sure what the point of that was, other than to compel me to march home and demand to know why I’d been denied an M in my initials.

“Your dad wanted you named after me,” explained my mother, Joan. “But I wanted to call you Paula. So we compromised.” (According to this decade-old article in The Atlantic, the decline of the use of the name Mary began in 1961 as individualism kicked in gear.)

I messaged back the Memorial Page person, explaining my supposition that Marie was not Grandma’s first or middle name, it was sort of a never-meant-to-be-used extra name that served to put in a good word with the folks upstairs.

Well, I didn’t hear back right away. So instead of being patient, I searched for some other proof.

I found Grandma’s social security card.

Name: Lucie M.

More digging. Documents she signed over the decades were all Lucie M. Plante (or Vayo, after 1926). Even her Will was Lucie M.

No proof.

Until …

A-ha! Even though the 1923 yearbook committee at Edward Little High School in Auburn, Maine, got the spelling of “Lucie” wrong (and what’s with that “motto”?!), they saved the day with Mathilda.

Of course, once I found the first proof, a second quickly appeared.

Grandma’s baptism certificate:

Armed with this solid proof, I messaged back to The Denier. At best, I hoped management of Grandma’s Find A Grave memorial page would be transferred to me. Otherwise, my fingers were crossed they would change “Marie” to just the initial M on the page.

Just heard back and we’re good to go. The page-management transfer took just a sec and I’ve fiddled with the text and added another photo. There’s a satisfaction in this that is probably second only to actually visiting my grandparents’ grave for a quiet prayer and to leave a bouquet of flowers.

Speaking of names and how they can go in and out of style, I told Farmer Gary that the fellow who took the gravestone photos was also named Gary. Of course, he asked me to message back for his birth year, as my husband is convinced that every Gary on this planet was born within a handful of years of 1955. Sure enough, the photographer was born in 1947 – and says there were three Garys in his class at school. My Gary couldn’t be more pleased.

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