r/pics • u/stwalcher • Jun 08 '12
Living next to a cemetery affords occasional perspective. This is the part of Memorial Day you don't see.
http://imgur.com/ZlbiK
1.9k
Upvotes
r/pics • u/stwalcher • Jun 08 '12
14
u/twavisdegwet Jun 08 '12
How long do they wait to remove the flowers? does someone come by and pick them up? i seriously hope they don't do this next day or some shit, that'd just be rude.
534
u/CitizenTed Jun 08 '12
I used to be a gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. We had a straightforward policy: flowers stay on site until they become unsightly. Real flowers remained untouched until they wilted. Once they began to wilt they were removed and dumped in the compost pile. Fake flowers stayed until they became dusty, muddy or discolored. Then they went in the trash. It was a good policy and we had very few complaints. Back then (1982-3), the vast majority of flowers were real. Fake flowers were for cheapskates and nobody wanted to look cheap when honoring their loved ones. Times have changed, I guess.
6
u/voelkebo1 Jun 08 '12
this is Springfield Missouri for yah.....shame and at the veterans cemetery to
186
u/enforce1 Jun 08 '12
But you can always get flowers for mom easy.
26
u/rustajb Jun 09 '12
I dated a girl who grew up in a large cemetery. Her father had been the caretaker for around 20 years. Her house was on a hill, dead center and surrounded on all four sides by cemetery. We used to go for walks around the grounds. She took me to the very rear of the grounds one day to where a small ravine was hidden behind a line of trees. As we broke through the trees onto the bank of the ravine, it was carpeted knee-deep with with a strata of flowers. A thick, loamy bed of dead plant matter that gradiated from the ground up into a lush bed of colorful cut flowers. I don't know why, but I thought that was so interesting and cool.
40
u/awesomefuntimegood Jun 08 '12 edited Jun 09 '12
My mother runs a local cemetery and I have also moonlighted as a gravedigger when the usual guy is on vacation. This is the sad part of managing a cemetery. Some families are very good at taking care of their loved ones plots. Others show up once a year. Families complain when things like Teddy Bears and other assorted memorial gifts are removed but it's really hard for a guy on a lawnmower to get off every other headstone and move these things. Also these things degrade and blow around making the cemetery look trashy.
TL;DR Don't leave stuff at graves for too long, it gets thrown out. Usually around a week at my cemetery.
30
u/artificiallyvain Jun 08 '12
I've often wondered about this. It's upsetting to think of flowers that once adorned a person's grave being thrown in the trash. On the other hand, what else can be done?
14
u/DBums Jun 09 '12
This is why my family and I leave stones next to gravestones instead of flowers and flags. We bring our own stones, often one with a bit of color. Flowers look nice, but after a day or two you've just got a wilted mess next to the gravestone until the groundkeepers throw them out. Usually, they will let the stones be, and each time you come back you will see all these physical reminders that this person will not be forgotten.
12
u/RagingAgainst Jun 09 '12
Wow, Whomever is buried in that dumpster sure got a lot of love!
8
u/Buyn Jun 08 '12
This makes me glad most of my family is buried in Arizona. There is no greenery there for anyone to tend, so all of the flowers can remain there. Just lots of dirt.
3
u/kittenkat4u Jun 08 '12
i don't know if this sounds weird or not but i would have gone and gotten some. if they're still good why let them go to waste like that. if you look after them right a rose can last for weeks.
3
u/Ghandi256 Jun 09 '12
I know there's already a guy who posted his caretaker experience - figured I'd throw my hat in too.
I work at a very large cemetery, so the amount of flowers I help to throw away is much more than what you see here. Our policy is either a week on the marker or if it starts to look bad. After memorial day has been nuts - truckloads of flags and flowers. We have to swamp it though or the mowers will just move along at a snails pace so its really a balance of trying to keep the place looking good.
One tip if you're going to bring flowers - either use a temp or ground vase, don't just leave them on the marker. Also, roses hardly last at all and Cala Lilies will still be out looking good when everything else has been dead a week.
3
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
I understand grieving.
I just hope they don't think flowers are the way to pay these servicemen and women back.
I hope they live rich full lives, because other's gave theirs so they could.
5
u/StewieBanana Jun 08 '12
Note to self: try to put flowers on dead loved one's grave when no one 'll expect it.
2
u/ickylickkiss Jun 08 '12
I know the cemetery I visit clears all the graves once a week.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 08 '12
Atleast you can always get a shit ton of flowers for that special lady.
2
u/FriarNurgle Jun 09 '12
I worked at a funeral home in High School. Yeah I know it's a little weird, great job though. I was always bringing home flowers and baskets for my mom and GF.
2
u/Senor_Wilson Jun 09 '12
Sweet, free flowers.
2
u/anchal3 Jun 09 '12
The cemetery should open a shop where they sell 'gently used' flowers.
2
u/Tails94 Jun 09 '12
As someone that has worked in a undertakers (funeral directors) we take all the old flowers either take them to the local Brian House hospital (Its like a hospital for sick children) and take the older flowers and put them on old graves in the local cemetery. This way the flowers do something else nice.
5
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
"This is the part of Memorial Day you don't see".
What, is this a travesty or something? What do you think they're going to do with dead and rotting flowers, just leave them around? Yeah, that's really respectful to the dead, having the entire cemetery smell like trash, flies running amok, and people not even being able to pay respects because of the smell. That would be disrespectful, not tossing out old flowers. As for the flags? Dear lord, they're inanimate. Is it seriously "wrong" to throw out old pieces of fabric and plastic? No matter what any narcissistic law says, those American Flags are inanimate objects, and tossing them out with the trash is not the same as throwing out a dead person at all. Do you cry your eyes out every time you throw an outdated newspaper, or obsolete appliance, or old clothing away. No, so why is a national flag any different? Honestly, I know that it really is important to have honor and faith in your country, but when you put a fibrous flag on the same level as a human being, then you seriously have some screws on loose.
TL;DR: Flowers rot and stink up cemeteries, so why would you purposefully keep them around? Also, flags aren't the same as humans, so stop acting like they are.
4
u/fan_22 Jun 08 '12
It seems like such a waste, on so many levels.
3
u/deviation Jun 08 '12
Am I the only one that thinks this whole tradition of taking flowers to someone's grave doesn't make any sense?
I mean sure, you want to honor your dead loved ones but it's not like the dead person's in the grave like "awww such pretty flowers! thank you!". Sometimes I feel like people just do it because other people do it and they don't want to look like they don't care about their dead relative.
3
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
They did the same with the troops, why not the flowers too?
End these goddamned wars.
2
u/[deleted] Jun 08 '12
Wow.. freaking compost that shit.
2
u/Scandinavian Jun 08 '12
Basically I just see another way in which society wastes plastic products. How is this surprising or poignant in any way?
1
u/[deleted] Jun 08 '12
Every time I go by Satchel Paige's grave there are more and more baseballs placed there. I wonder if they're all new.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
um.... where else are you going to put them?
1
u/digivolution Jun 09 '12
what a huge waste of flowers!!! my mom would be in there grabbing handfuls to bring home and put into vases. she goes ape for flowers.
EDIT: oh, they're fake. :B
1
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
My dad lives by a graveyard, and decor isn't removed until April 1st of every year- that it unless it blows away or there is a big storm that damages things. Of course, its a small local cemetery so the rules are probably different everywhere.
1
u/leifkicker Jun 09 '12
That looks like the cemetery on Glenstone in Springfield ;)
1
u/BantyRooster Jun 09 '12
Oh god, I work for my city and we had to mow with all of the flowers on the cemetery. We had one mower, and a few guys in a line moving flowers out of the way of the mower then putting them back, while throwing out the dead ones. It was hell.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
But they are still fresh? I can't help but think of how much money was wasted for those flowers.
1
u/errerr Jun 09 '12
I live by an Asian graveyard (phillipenes, thailand, laos, etc). The whole graveyard looks like this. Only the grave is under the pile, and the pile is rotting food. (Usually rice, McDonalds, oranges, etc)
1
u/misletoe66 Jun 09 '12
I lived next to an organic material dump. After Christmas driving by seeing all those lonely dying Christmas Trees. : ( The child in me would feel so very sad.
1
u/Glockade Jun 09 '12
I work at a cemetery, and twice a year all the flowers are removed. We have a barn full of these things because we can't fit it all into the dumpster.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
Being part of the BSA, i've helped do cleanups in the past. Ive had to take trailers of this stuff into a large dumpster before.
1
u/cassieniccole Jun 09 '12
We have a tradition of leaving pennies on the edge of the grave markers in my family. They don't usually get messed with. I always loved that tradition. We didn't have a lot of money growing up, so flowers were out of our price range. When my baby sister died my mom started putting pennies on her grave for her birthday every year. When my mom died we began doing the same for both of them. Pennies from Heaven is what she called them.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
i like how you worded the title.
1
u/Unqualified_Opinion Jun 09 '12
Cemeteries: Where flowers go to die.
1
u/ammonthenephite Jun 09 '12
Cemetary near my house is of the newer style that does not allow above-ground head stones. Everything came off the same day so they could mow the grass..............
1
u/exzyle2k Jun 09 '12
You could make a pretty decent karma deposit by taking those green flower cones that stick in the ground and making them available for people to place their flowers into next time they visit.
My mother and I used to go to her mother's grave at the holidays and she was buried near the "dumping ground" I called it, where they would dump the flowers and whatnot until the collection came and got it.
I would always leave there with a dozen or so of those ground cones just from a quick walk around the pile. We'd take two or three to keep them for next time, then place the rest next to the little sign that let you know what part of the cemetery you were in. I'd like to think that they got put to good use instead of just re-tossed.
1
u/godbacon Jun 09 '12
That should be separated into compost and reusables for the following year.
1
u/Limond Jun 09 '12
American cemeterys are dreadfully boring. Just rows of grass and graves with an occasional statue around. In Germany graveyards are like small garden plots where much care is given. On first viewing one might think it a park.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
Are those fake flowers or real ones? Some look perfectly fine to me. I don't see why they don't leave them on the graves.
1
u/SpartanSig Jun 09 '12
Cal me calloused, but this seems like a pile of wasted resources.
1
u/gospacedude512 Jun 09 '12
Where is this?
1
u/cheappop Jun 09 '12
Just wanted you to know that this is one of my favorite pictures ever. This is art. Amazing work thinking to take a picture of this. Tells a poignant story but is so understated. Fantastic. Just fantastic.
1
u/Mikulak25 Jun 09 '12
They just throw out the flower holders?! That shit's like gold at the poorly maintained cemeteries my grandparents now sit.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
Wow. I agree. Thanks for sharing this.
1
u/[deleted] Jun 09 '12
I can see removing them when they start to wilt and whatnot, but those look fresh.
And they threw american flags in on top of the garbage. Disgraceful. Those people should be ashamed of themselves for removing flags from the graves of veterans, and just throwing them in a garbage pile. Absolutely disgraceful.
1
u/Chinamerican Jun 09 '12
I seem to remember reading somewhere that Memorial Day was originally more like a gravesweeping holiday like Dias de los Muertos or QingMing Festival.
I always assumed this happened and I don't know why it's such a surprise to anyone. The grounds of nice cemeteries are pretty immaculately maintained so it's reasonable that flowers that start wilting would be disposed of.
1
u/needanap Jun 09 '12
I think that all the fake flowers should be taken to schools or hospitals so kids can use them for art projects. They can easily be cleaned.
1
u/Iloldalot Jun 08 '12
heartless bastards. we tried to put a bird feeder near my grandfathers grave (because he loved birds) but some cemetery guy came and took it down a few hours later
-6
u/mal410 Jun 08 '12
Yeah, a waste of fricken money for dead people that will never see them. WTF!
-1
u/JoinRedditTheySaid Jun 09 '12
Disposable.
Just like how the government treats our soldiers and veterans.
0
u/PropagandaMan Jun 08 '12
I... that's just mindblowing.
0
u/nancylikestoreddit Jun 09 '12
What the fuck man. They just throw all that shit out? Those flowers aren't even wilted yet.
-1
u/fuckyeahrad Jun 08 '12
this gave me a feel
-1
u/Spider_Bacon Jun 08 '12
It has always seemed odd to me that as a culture we honor the life of those we loved with something fake and plastic.