Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Its hard to go to a cemetery when you have moved away. I have moved away from both of my parents cemeteries. They are both around 3 hours driving distance from me, but If ever I am in the area, I always make it a point to visit and clean their stones and area up, and place new flowers.
People move. There isn't a lot you can do about it.
That is another thing, OP. People move away from where their loved ones are buried.
I had a preacher who lost one of their sons and he is buried in the old church cemetery. They could not handle living in the house where he died and had to move. They have now gone from place to place and country to country doing missionary work. I am not sure that they are able to come and visit a cemetery which is half the US away from them....
I am Mexican-American and go visit the graves of my deceased grandparents, great grandparents and aunt and uncle just about every time I come to my south Texas hometown. Since it is an old racially segregated cemetery, it's very obvious that the Anglo side NEVER has any visitors. In all of the years that i've visited this cemetery, I have never seen ONE visitor to that side of the cemetery. Is this common?
I don't know about WASPs (white Anglo Saxon protestants). Not all white people have the same culture. I'm Irish Catholic and when I was growing up we visited the cemetery constantly. There are so many pictures of me as a child all dressed up in my Sunday best surrounded by head stones. In my culture we have wakes and spend a lot of time visiting family members who have passed away.
I've also noticed that much of white culture is very different from my family. From an outsider's perspective, WASP culture seems colder and not as family oriented. That's my perception...not sure what the reality is.
Having thought about this off and on for years................I think American's who aren't religious don't visit their dead as often. America, IMO, is more of an individualistic society rather than a community. It's always the rights of the individual vs the good of the whole. My wife, European, but not religious visits whenever she is there and her parents go twice a year and make reefs for the grandparents.
I didn't even have grandparents, they were already dead, my Stepdad was abusive so I visited his grave more for my sake than his to get things off my chest and move on.
If my Mom or wife died, I would cremate them and put them in urns so I could be close to them at all times, no visit necessary.
I don't know about WASPs (white Anglo Saxon protestants). Not all white people have the same culture. I'm Irish Catholic and when I was growing up we visited the cemetery constantly. There are so many pictures of me as a child all dressed up in my Sunday best surrounded by head stones. In my culture we have wakes and spend a lot of time visiting family members who have passed away.
I've also noticed that much of white culture is very different from my family. From an outsider's perspective, WASP culture seems colder and not as family oriented. That's my perception...not sure what the reality is.
Because people do not visit graves does not make them cold. A persons lifeless body does not realize you are standing on their grave. Not in my opinion, anyway. I believe my family members who have passed are looking down upon me.
Some people choose to share their time with their living family members. If they spent all their time standing at a grave and none of their time with their family members, then they would be pretty cold.
You people calling certain white people cold because they don't visit a grave everyday should get your priorities straight......
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Do not stand at my grave and weep,
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you wake in the morning hush,
I am the swift, uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.
Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.
Do not stand at my grave and cry.
I am not there, I did not die!
Mary Frye
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When I die, people don't need to come and cry over my grave. I would like them to talk about me and remember me and tell the stories of my life, just as I do with the ones I have lost. I tell their story so that they may live on through me, and through my children, and theirs.
It is what my family has done forever. I can just picture family members that are long gone and I have never even met through the stories my grandmother, aunts and uncles, and parents have told about them. Now all of us kids and cousins continue to tell their story.
I like that. Of course I could change all that and just stand at a grave and not let them live on through us. Their stories can end on the day they die and they can never be heard of again....
No. I don't think so. I do visit my parents grave when I am in town and I clean their stones and put flowers there.
Most excellent post, Pik. I too "know" relatives but never met them because of stories told. That's how it is supposed to be.
Sorry, I need to "spread it".
Thank you. My mom passed on Christmas Eve in 2000 and I read this partial poem at her funeral:
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says, "There, she is gone!"
"Gone where?"
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says, "There, she is gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"
And that is dying.
Even though I lost my mother, I knew that there were others waiting to greet her. I know that one day I will be with her again once I live this life. I know that she is not hanging around watching her grave and waiting for me to get there because she is within me every day. She and my father. They never left me and I carry them in the person I am today, whether I am at their grave-site or not.
I wonder if part of this stems from the fact that many Americans, unless they have a heritage that directs them otherwise, tend to be very future and youth-oriented, and want to gloss over the facts of death.
Hispanic families, which are more likely to include extended family members living together, are sometimes more intimately familiar with the life cycle. Among most whites, on the other hand, dying family members stay in nursing homes, rather than at home, and so aging and death become clinical abstractions rather than palpable experiences.
Even though we "know" our loved one died, some of us might find it "counter-productive" to brood, and feel pressured to get over grief; after all, "you're going to see them in heaven", right? I find that Hispanic cultures, with their sometimes fatalistic viewpoints, seem to accept death more readily and incorporate awareness of mortality into the psyche of their members.
I wonder if part of this stems from the fact that many Americans, unless they have a heritage that directs them otherwise, tend to be very future and youth-oriented, and want to gloss over the facts of death.
Hispanic families, which are more likely to include extended family members living together, are sometimes more intimately familiar with the life cycle. Among most whites, on the other hand, dying family members stay in nursing homes, rather than at home, and so aging and death become clinical abstractions rather than palpable experiences.
Even though we "know" our loved one died, some of us might find it "counter-productive" to brood, and feel pressured to get over grief; after all, "you're going to see them in heaven", right? I find that Hispanic cultures, with their sometimes fatalistic viewpoints, seem to accept death more readily and incorporate awareness of mortality into the psyche of their members.
I am a white woman and my father passed when I was 21. I took care of him until the day he died. My mother died 5 years later and her care-giving lasted quite a bit longer than my fathers. I also took care of her until her last breath.
I arranged their funerals. I never glossed over the facts of life or death. My parents took care of me when I was a child and unable to take care of myself and it was my duty to do the same for them.
I don't know why, but this thread is getting to me with the broad generalizations about white people being cold, etc, etc.
I am not Hispanic, so I don't know what they do. I am white and I do what I do. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I am white, but with the fact of who I am. My brothers and sisters are white too (go figure) but they did not take care of my parents.
I spent my time grieving and visiting their graves very often, especially my father. The day he died was the day I lost my best friend, my dad, my hero.
There is not a day that goes by that they do not cross my mind.
As soon as I posted this, I said to myself, "But of course, that's a pretty broad generalization." I surely didn't mean to offend or bring up painful memories, so you have my sincere apologies.
One of the challenges of writing on a forum rather than speaking in person is a) You have no idea what type of person I am, and b) Nuance and clarification is lost when we're not face to face.
I was thinking in very general terms about how people deal with illness and death. This isn't so much an Anglo/White issue, surely, but, as some other posters have pointed out, an issue of how we in the West generally approach mortality vs. how we traditionally have done so in the past. Immigrants and their children sometimes approach death and family life in a more traditional way than many Whites do, but it was ill-advised for me to paint the issue with such a broad brush.
I admire you the sacrifice you made for your parents, and sympathize with your grief.
As soon as I posted this, I said to myself, "But of course, that's a pretty broad generalization." I surely didn't mean to offend or bring up painful memories, so you have my sincere apologies.
One of the challenges of writing on a forum rather than speaking in person is a) You have no idea what type of person I am, and b) Nuance and clarification is lost when we're not face to face.
I was thinking in very general terms about how people deal with illness and death. This isn't so much an Anglo/White issue, surely, but, as some other posters have pointed out, an issue of how we in the West generally approach mortality vs. how we traditionally have done so in the past. Immigrants and their children sometimes approach death and family life in a more traditional way than many Whites do, but it was ill-advised for me to paint the issue with such a broad brush.
I admire you the sacrifice you made for your parents, and sympathize with your grief.
You're also generalizing about ALL hispanics being first or second generation. I can assure you that there were a lot of us in the southwestern US before all of these invaders from Mexico came in.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
