The gravesite of my mother’s lifelong friend remains without a monument over a year after the temporary marker identifying her plot was staked into the ground.
Cemeteries have always been a mixed bag in our family. I don't need them to remember or feel the respect - yet I like that they are there, mostly because my Mom would find solace in a visit. It was a road trip to Long Island and a meal at a restaurant, mostly Italian closer to home back in Brooklyn. My sweet Mom was always grateful and joy as she would soak up her "gravy" and the memories of the day. thank you for tapping my memory of those days.
Funny how we often have memories of a restaurant meal accompanying our cemetery visits. And how such treks conjure memories of past visits with souls no longer with us.
I don't mind going to cemeteries and I find looking at the markers is always interesting and to some extent fun. But I do not believe that I have to be at the grave site to communicate with my departed loved ones. Where their "remains" are is irrelevant to me. They are in my heart and I speak to them all the time. After my husband died, we spread 1/2 of his ashes in the Neuse River where our house was in North Carolina. The second half will go into the Great South Bay near our summer house in Fire Island. For a more permanent "monument" I have engraved plaques on theater seats at New York Theatre Workshop, which we both loved and supported for many years - and still do.
Cemeteries have always been a mixed bag in our family. I don't need them to remember or feel the respect - yet I like that they are there, mostly because my Mom would find solace in a visit. It was a road trip to Long Island and a meal at a restaurant, mostly Italian closer to home back in Brooklyn. My sweet Mom was always grateful and joy as she would soak up her "gravy" and the memories of the day. thank you for tapping my memory of those days.
Funny how we often have memories of a restaurant meal accompanying our cemetery visits. And how such treks conjure memories of past visits with souls no longer with us.
I don't mind going to cemeteries and I find looking at the markers is always interesting and to some extent fun. But I do not believe that I have to be at the grave site to communicate with my departed loved ones. Where their "remains" are is irrelevant to me. They are in my heart and I speak to them all the time. After my husband died, we spread 1/2 of his ashes in the Neuse River where our house was in North Carolina. The second half will go into the Great South Bay near our summer house in Fire Island. For a more permanent "monument" I have engraved plaques on theater seats at New York Theatre Workshop, which we both loved and supported for many years - and still do.
When loved ones leave us, we discover new ways of connecting with them that transcend their mortal existence.