Whoever heard of a cemetery that inscribes the deceased's name on a wall after cremeation but does not allow the scattering of ashes? Only 15 years ago we scattered my mother's ashes here, and engraved her name on the Winter Wall. Only 3 families are immortalized on this wall. Everybody else in Minneapolis chose more popular seasons, like Spring, to the left.
Hillside Cemetery made an exception for us, since some of us traveled from California and New York for this celebration of life for my Aunt Dolores. The cemetery's reasoning for the ban? The ashes are killing the vegetation around the memorials. You'd think they woulda thunk of that in advance, given their choice of businesses to run.
It's a lovely cemetery over Northeast. As we approached, I noticed almost every grave seemed to have flowers on it, which made me wonder if there wasn't some sort of shaming going on. You know, people bring so many flowers here that if your loved one's grave had no flowers, it was sending a statement to everybody that you didn't love them, they died all alone and nobody cares. So people feel pressured to keep up with the Joneses.
But then my sister said, hey, we just had Memorial Day. It's not like this all year. You can read more of our carrying-on's in my personal blog today at this link: Saying Goodbye to Aunt Dolores at Hillside Cemetery.
Comments(14)