Something good can be said about holidays – they seem more meaningful when they are spent with loved ones and family. During the Christmas Season, a lot of persons tend to reflect on their loved ones – deceased and living.
Losing a loved one through death can be a very difficult, emotional and heart-breaking experience, but we do our best to honour the deceased with a memorial service, a burial plot, and an attractive marker.
When we take our loved ones to their final resting place, we make the cemetery an historical site in that it should record the memory, life story and legacy of our loved ones for generations to come. It almost becomes a sacred attraction for visitors – young and old – as it preserves our own history and brings to mind many memories of the person, his/her family, and culture.
We take pride as a society in the way we go through the rituals and ceremonies of remembrance and interment of loved ones who have passed on. We sometimes erect impressive vaults, and well-painted or decorated monuments, to receive the remains of our departed loved ones but, after a while, what was once a beautiful grave site can start to look like a neglected wasteland.
As I moved through Anguilla over the last few weeks, I couldn’t help but notice the unkempt state of cemeteries around the island, and reflected on my own grandparents, now deceased…Did I remember to replace the broken cross on their tomb? Did I replace the faded and tattered floral wreath?
Sadly, the observation of neglect and disrepair was obvious at most of the cemeteries I visited, with very few exceptions, one being the Methodist Cemetery in The Valley which, I was told, is usually kept up all year round. But the others did not reflect well on us as a caring and empathetic people.
We often assume that the church or government associated with a particular cemetery will provide all the maintenance necessary for the upkeep of the grave site. And while the grave site owners or custodians may, from time to time, provide general clean up and maintenance of the common areas in the cemetery, we should take personal responsibility for the upkeep and maintenance of our loved ones’ individual interment sites.
Perhaps, there is a need for the collective “us” to establish some common standards for the maintenance of cemeteries across the island. Properly maintaining a grave site shouldn’t require a lot of time and effort if it is done regularly and consistently. Instead, it should be viewed as a labour of love and respect. In fact, it should serve to keep our loved one’s memorial looking the way it did when we first laid them to rest – a place we can take pride in visiting, not only on holidays, but anytime we want to pass by and recall or retell their history. What a simple way to honour our deceased loved ones.
