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The cost, and I think people are less effusive these days.
In trying to think of things to say at my mother's memorial service, I realized that all of the "I miss you" and that kind of thing was something private that would stay between me and her, not to be recited out loud for dramatic effect in public, even public with family. I would feel the same way about a headstone. I wouldn't consider a headstone to be the place to tell the person how I felt about them, nor would I want to announce something so private to every stranger who passed.
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Originally Posted by SunGrins
Some cemeteries have rules that determine the placement of headstones. My stone is already in place awaiting my arrival but it has to be flush with the ground so they can easily cut the grass. That usually limits the size to just the basics.
I've seen flush gravestones that were pretty large, though... often the historical ones.
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Originally Posted by dizzybint
so you can actually visit your grave and leave flowers..
I would do this...
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Originally Posted by VTsnowbird
I have news for the "flush" gravestone crowd....in a few years or decades they will disappear as the soil around them builds up.
Yup. I know this because I once went searching for a friend's relative's graves (the cemetery was near where I lived so I said I'd go and find the graves and take pictures)... I dug one out of the sod (and several others, so I could read them and see if they were what I was looking for, and most of them were grown over completely so you didn't even know they were there)... if the others she was seeking had stones, I couldn't find them. (They weren't the upright kind that had just fallen from time; they were actually flush stones.)
There can also be unexpected side benefits from reading epitaphs. That's where I learned the word "bosom," though my mother had to really go through some verbal gymnastics to explain it to me.
In trying to think of things to say at my mother's memorial service, I realized that all of the "I miss you" and that kind of thing was something private that would stay between me and her, not to be recited out loud for dramatic effect in public, even public with family. I would feel the same way about a headstone. I wouldn't consider a headstone to be the place to tell the person how I felt about them, nor would I want to announce something so private to every stranger who passed.
While he was alive, we didn't do much pda, we kept that for behind closed doors but when he died, I wanted it there for all eternity. I don't care who reads it, why should I? They don't mean anything to me.
While he was alive, we didn't do much pda, we kept that for behind closed doors but when he died, I wanted it there for all eternity. I don't care who reads it, why should I? They don't mean anything to me.
That's precisely why I wouldn't need them to read it.
If there's stuff I didn't say to her when she was alive, it's not going to fix anything to say it to other people after she's gone.
Like OP, I’ve wished we hadn’t lost the old kind of wordy headstones. I walked through a cemetery once where someone had died after being run over by a wagon. The stones included history, and they were so interesting.
That's one thing I like about the cemetery where my husband is buried, and where I will be buried as well. There is such a variety of headstones, and such personalization too. Some of them are very dramatic and large; some have pictures etched on them; and a fair number have beautiful statues as well. I think people ought to have the option to make their last piece of real estate as memorable as possible.
I have news for the "flush" gravestone crowd....in a few years or decades they will disappear as the soil around them builds up.
I know of some approaching 60 years old and they aren't close to disappearing.
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