Grieving Parent

Tag: Graveyard Gardens

  • Perpetual French Fries

    Perpetual French Fries

    I don’t guess this really has that much to do with grieving, but it’s sort of amazing.

    In the week before Christmas I was on vacation. Debbie wasn’t, and since she works at our church, Christmas is one of her busy seasons.

    I went in to help her one morning with some stuff to get ready for the Children’s Christmas Mass. Around lunch time I was leaving to go home, but Debbie was staying on to work some more. I went to the local McDonald’s and bought some lunch for us. I left hers with her at her office and took mine.

    It was a pretty nice day for late December, so I took mine to the cemetery. I sat at the garden bench my aunts and uncles bought for us and talked to Richard and my mom while eating lunch. I went over in front of Richard’s stone and told him, “Here have some french fries.” I tossed a few fries on the ground at his grave.

    The picture above shows one of those french fries today.

    It’s been rained on several times. It’s been covered in snow at least twice. It has been in the sun, wind and nature for a month and a half.

    It’s still there.

    Bleached out, but still there.

    Wow.

  • Tree Thieves Strike

    Tree Thieves Strike

    Christmas was always a big deal to Richard. So we put out a Christmas tree at his grave and one at my mom’s grave which is located right behind Richard’s. We used live trees, intending to plant them somewhere later.

    They were in pots. We just dug into the ground and buried them up to the rim of the pot.

    I made a trip to the cemetery today. Where once there were Christmas trees there are now holes in the ground. The picture above is where our tree once stood.

    Our cemetery has a rule against artificial decorations. They allow an exception during the Christmas season. During Christmas we are allowed to place wreathes and other artificial decorations. At the end of January the artificial decorations must be removed.

    I never thought a real live tree would fall under this rule.

    But it seems my definition of artificial is much different than the staff of the cemetery.

    Very aggravating.

  • Footprints

    Footprints

    I was in town this morning, so I went to the cemetery.

    The cemetery had been closed on Sunday because of the snowy weather. Today it was open again.

    As I left my car and started walking down the hill to Richard’s grave I looked out over the snow covered ground. There was one set of footprints. They led down the hill and turned to face Richard’s grave.

    I was struck by the scene.

    Here was a picture of the never ending and lonely love of a mother that has lost her child.

    You could feel the coldness of her sorrow in the snow.

    And yet the beauty of her love is there as well.

    It was a powerful picture.

    But of course I didn’t bring my camera. And I forgot my cell phone too.

    So I had to find a stock photo to use for this post. It’s not near as good, but I hope you get the idea.

  • Christmas Decorating at the Cemetery

    Sunday afternoon we did a little Christmas decorating at the cemetery.

    There have already been many wreaths showing up. Debbie decided she wanted Richards grave to look different. So she bought a couple of small live trees. She put in a few ornaments and red bows.

    Richard always insisted on cranberry sauce for Christmas. Not the store bought kind, that stuff that looks like it came out of a tin can jello mold. Nope. It had to be the real thing.

    So every year Debbie bought cranberries and cooked them on the stove with sugar. This was a time consuming job requiring lots of stirring. Richard helped. Some.

    So Debbie got cranberries and made strings of berries with them. We placed them on the trees.

    We took these potted trees to the cemetery. I dug them in deep enough the wind shouldn’t be able to turn them over. We put one at Richard’s grave and one at my mom’s grave, which is located behind Richard.

    After Christmas we’ll take them out and plant them somewhere.

  • Trouble at the Cemetery

    Trouble at the Cemetery

    Got a call last week from Mark at the cemetery.

    “Someone put up a rock border around your son’s headstone.”

    Well, yeah. Debbie and I spent an entire Sunday afternoon putting that there. We wanted to get it looking nice for Richard’s birthday.

    It was hard work. The sod in that area of the cemetery has a tough root system. It didn’t come up easily. The ground was like concrete. We dug some of it out and added nice planting soil we got from Lowe’s.

    Well, it seems rock and stone edging is against the rules. Liability issues.

    So, this past weekend we went back and removed the edging stones.

    For now we didn’t put in a new edging. Only wood and plastic are allowed. Didn’t see any that are pleasing to us. We added a few more flowers too.

    Richard's grave with the dangerous edging removed.
    Richard’s grave with the dangerous edging removed.