It was, he told me, a monument dedicated to his wife. She had passed away four years earlier, after forty-four years of marriage. He could not forget her, nor did he wish to. He would never find anyone else to love, and he had no intention of trying. So he visited her every day, weather permitting. Even on some of the coldest winter mornings he would show up, sometimes remaining in the warmth of his car’s interior but still very much present.
He explained to me that he greeted her by name on arrival, settled into his chair, told her of his daily activities, and then said a tender good-bye. Joggers and cemetery personnel steered clear, probably thinking him unbalanced. He didn’t care.
To this day, I still wave to him whenever I arrive at the cemetery and as I depart. His genuine smile of recognition—and his enduring devotion to his beloved wife—warm my heart. There are other stories that do, too. A thirty-year-old Nascar fan’s monument is decorated with Matchbox cars. His widow and his mother visit regularly. They sit together on a Jeff Gordon blanket and stay a long time.
Sometimes there are difficult stories as well. Once, I saw a grieving father plopped on the ground, his back resting against his late daughter’s recently erected monument. I had conducted the funeral for his precious twenty-two-year-old just a few months earlier. At the time of her death, he was an inconsolable basket case—sobbing violently and shaking.
After the funeral he thanked me but admitted that he was thinking of ending his own life so that he might join his daughter in heaven. I informed three separate grief-support organizations, and they contacted the gentleman the next day. One woman who specialized in assisting parents who had lost children reported later that the man seemed to be adjusting well and, in her opinion, was starting to heal.
But the father had already chosen the day of his daughter’s monument installation to shoot himself. Cemetery workers noticed him seated at her grave, armed with a handgun, so they called police to the scene. After many tense moments of negotiations and pleading, the father shot himself dead and slumped against the base of his daughter’s beautiful pink-granite headstone.
Another time, an elderly woman approached me at the conclusion of her husband’s funeral and requested that I escort everyone out of the chapel, so that we might be alone. She then asked me to snip a lock of her husband’s hair so that she could retain it as a keepsake. I placed it in a plastic bag and handed it to her.
A few weeks later she stopped by to pay off the funeral bill. She reached into her purse and produced a glass baby-food jar that contained another lock of hair, this one from her child, who had died in 1952. The tightly closed metal lid had kept it in pristine condition for more than fifty years. She also showed me a cracked and faded photograph of her child lying in a casket. She’d made it a habit to gaze at the aged photo and the lock of hair every morning as a tribute—and she planned the same daily ritual to honor her husband.
Another time, my son and I arrived at a beautiful two-story home in an upscale subdivision to remove the body of a young woman, a cancer victim. Bicycles, Big Wheels, and assorted balls scattered about the carefully manicured lawn showed that this was a tragic case indeed: three towheaded little boys, ages four, seven, and ten, had lost their mother.
We entered the front door, and were greeted by the bereaved husband, a red-eyed man of forty. He directed us to the first-floor bedroom, and on the way down the hall, we spotted various family portraits of a beautiful blonde woman, her handsome husband, and their three sons, all smiling at different stages of life.
On entering the bedroom, we met a vision of sadness—the deceased young woman, still in her bed, surrounded by her mother and her children, each tenderly caressing her, and the boys stroking their mother’s arms and legs. Their father escorted them out of the room so that we could prepare for her removal. Cancer had reduced this once-lovely woman to a shell of herself; she had sunken, dark eyes, her temples were depressed from severe weight loss, and her limbs as thin as sticks.
We carefully carried her into the waiting hearse, and I consulted with the husband regarding burial plans. As we talked, the ten-year-old looked up at me and said, “Mister, I don’t want my mom to be dead.”
At the visitation two days later, I watched with great sadness as the devastated family arrived. Then the husband and three little boys stood before the young mother’s casket, wracked with grief. Usually, children of that age are easily bored and restless. But throughout the evening, the boys stood near their father, accepting hugs from relatives, yet all the while stealing glances toward their casketed mother.
The father wrote me a kind letter a few weeks later that his wife had been amazingly restored to her original beauty and looked healthy again, just like they remembered. He thanked me over and over for making his wife and the boys’ mother look so pretty for her visitation and funeral.
For some reason, major holidays are hugely represented at cemeteries. Grave sites are often festooned with New Year’s noisemakers in January, heart-shaped red balloons in February, green derby hats in March, and Easter-egg trees in April. I have seen witches on broomsticks and pumpkins of all sizes in October, and cornucopia in November. And in December there are countless Christmas trees, some with battery-powered lights; garlands; icicles; and even small, beautifully wrapped presents.
I have often wondered why survivors go to such lengths. Is it because the deceased loved the holidays? Or does the family want to include him or her in their merrymaking? Such displays may look garish to observers, yet they obviously provide some degree of comfort, or people wouldn’t do it. Grief is an intensely personal journey. Each of us handles it in our own way. From 1962 until he died in 1999, the baseball great Joe DiMaggio sent fresh bouquets of red roses twice a week to the crypt of his beloved former wife, Marilyn Monroe.
Never have I seen the holidays more prominent than in the case of a minister’s seven-year-old daughter. She was afflicted with erythroblastosis and finally succumbed, outliving her doctor’s predictions by three years. She died in late November. This charismatic minister and several of his flock waited for me to arrive at the hospital to take his child to the funeral home. I placed her little body in the vehicle, and the entire group returned to their cars to follow me. The pastor-led mourners even accompanied me into the preparation room and assisted me in placing the girl on the table.
My waiting employer and I soon learned that the assembled congregation planned to keep vigil while we embalmed the body. As soon as the doors closed, they began chanting, wailing, and saying desperate heartfelt prayers—and they continued for hours. I wept as I worked, hearing this heartbroken clergy, his wife, and his friends pleading with God to please bring their little girl back to life. Of course, it was not to be, and even I felt a little cheated on their behalf that God did not answer prayers so genuinely offered.
After the embalming was completed, they handed us the child’s burial clothing and hastily selected a casket. We put cosmetics on the beautiful little girl, dressed her, and placed her in a pink casket, its fifty-four-inch length a sad reminder that this was not some ninety-year-old great-grandmother who had lived a long, satisfying life but a vivid realization of every parent’s worst nightmare. The progression of events had certainly been unusual. Leading an unofficial procession from the hospital to the funeral home had occurred before, though not often. Embalming a body, however, while family members and friends waited just outside the door was a first for me, as was dressing and putting a dead child in the casket with the mourners looking on. Still, where grieving loved ones are concerned, I always hesitate to make judgments. Perhaps this was part of their healing process. But then, after the funeral, the minister asked us to place his daughter’s casket in his car. She would lie, he said, near the family fireplace at home, so she could spend Thanksgiving with the rest of the family. And that’s exactly what happened. The day after the holiday we were called back to the residence to retrieve the little girl and conduct a proper funeral service.