Hi Margow,
Thank you so much for the information about Crematoriums in Kirkcaldy and Dunfermline - and where people from that area would likely have been cremated at the time! It is extremely helpful to know this, as I had no idea.
In relation to the my parents and local relatives trying to visit Helen's grave, it was in March, 1981. My parents went back to Scotland for a holiday and to spend time with family. The relatives were Helen's husband's siblings, who Helen and her husband, John, had lived with - and who my father (Helen and John's son) went to live with and was raised by, after Helen died (my father was 2 yo at the time of Helen's death).
The diary entry by my mother is only short. Mum states that they had been to 'look at Grandad's grave' (John's father, buried in Hayfield Cemetery, Kirkcaldy), which 'had a new headstone'. The entry continues - "Tried to find Helen's grave but the yard was all locked up and overgrown" (which she then describes only as being like the old graveyard in the town she lived in Tasmania - which at the time was very old, with mostly crumbling/broken tombstones and overgrown with weeds, gorse, native trees/plants etc.). "Couldn't find a key anywhere". The next sentence says they then took the relatives on "a wee tour around Kirkcaldy, over their own childhood jaunts".
That is all I have but it confirmed for me that Helen must have been buried, and that it was likely somewhere close to Kirkcaldy (at least within a relatively short driving distance, I would presume).
As an aside - my thinking around Patthead as being a possibility for where Helen may be buried comes from the following -
the Reverend who was thanked in the Acknowledgement notice in The Fife Free Press, delivered services at a church in Pathhead around the time Helen died;
Pathhead appears to have/have had a locked, gated cemetery that was overgrown and in a state of disrepair at the time of my parent's visit;
John's father is cited as having previously lived at 1 Mid Street, West End, Kirkcaldy Burgh, overlooking the Pathhead graveyard;
John's mother's maiden name is Buist and there are records showing that her father also lived at this address (1 Mid Street-, West End);
and most recently I have found out
there is a plot at the Pathhead graveyard where 9 members of the Buist family are interred (although I am yet to research to see if they are directly related to John's mother).
May all be just leading me down a rabbit hole but with no record of Helen's burial, I have been/and continue to go down many of those in my quest to find where she is buried.
Many thanks,
Diane
