General Chat

I know this is a sensitive subject but I have been thinking about what arrangements I would like in the event of my passing.

Is it a great comfort that if a loved one is buried in the local cemetery along with a headstone? Would you like to be able to visit the grave and have quiet time with your loved ones, put fresh flowers on the grave?
I'm sure many of us look upon the grave as a reminder of our loved ones and a place of comfort when one feels sad or alone. A place you can go to anytime.

Or would you find comfort in having your loved ones ashes in a box or sealed jar on a shelf in your house? Maybe having the ashes close to you gives you comfort that your loved one is never far away? Then if you move house and away from the area, you will always have the ashes with you to give you comfort.

You can of course at anytime have the ashes buried. My father wants to be cremated so that his ashes and my grandmothers ashes(currently on shelf in study from 2002) can be buried eventually together as he has already purchased his plot in a cemetery.

For me there is no local crematorium here, so if I passed suddenly, I would be buried in my local graveyard 2 miles up the road but I would be "all alone" as no other member of my family would be buried there.

What do others think?

Hope I don't offend anyone who has recently lost a loved one, that is not my intention.

Florence in the hebrides

I can't look at gravestones of my grandparents and further back to the 1890s. The large municipal graveyard has had the headstones removed and all you see is a great expanse of lawns. There are row markers but most of the graves have flattened so you can't make out individual graves.

Oh Pat how sad for you. Did you know before they were removed where the graves were?
Well a friend of mine turned a corner of her garden into a memorial to her mum. She planted a huge rose bush and smaller plants around it. She then made a wooden plaque in memory of her mother and put that under the rose. The reason was because she had moved a long way away from where she was buried and could not visit the grave. So this memorial she created gave her comfort and her place to remember her.

Florence in the hebrides

Yes we did know where some were as mum took my sister and myself 2 or 3 times a year to clean up the graves and place flowers in the vases. This was until 1962, my maternal grandfather died 1960 my maternal grandmother 1969 and placed in the same grave as my grandfather. All others buried before them.

My paternal grandparents had their grave in a different area as they had their grave a long time and was for 3 burials, their daughter died in her early 20s in 1936. This area also held my great grandparents - my mother's grandparents. They died 1928 /1933 and 1933/1937. There would be lots of my mother's family in there in the earliest section. My father's family came from a nearby town so will be buried there.

My sister went to check some graves for me and got a map from the council - she was shocked by what she found. She couldn't get her bearings without some of the old monuments and when she found the rows she couldn't identify the individual graves. :-(

I am very unsentimental about graves etc. I have only found one family headstone in all my genealogy searching. Yes, they are somewhere 'to go' but after all the people who remembered you are gone, the grave is unlikely to be visited. I want to leave my body to our nearest university hospital, I'm already registered with them and have it in my will. No funeral, no fuss thanks. Over the last 6 years I've lost all my immediate family and have no children so I want the easiest option!

From a genealogy point of view, if they are still there and accessible, gravestones are useful. I have visited my Grandparents. but my parents were cremated, the ashes buried at the crematorium. I don't need to hold ashes in the house or to visit graves to remember them. My beloved OH was cremated and we scattered his ashes adjacent to his much loved golf course. I don't need to visit there to remember him. I just look at the lovely garden he created and the house he loved, those are my memorials. I also created a sort of memorial in our favourite place in the garden where we would sit having a drink on sunny evenings. People who you have loved stay in your heart.

We have all moved out of the family area where we grew up and some are buried in the local church and municipal cemetery
No one visits any of the cemeteries now

Both parents were cremated , dad passed first and his ashes were scattered at the crematorium, when mum passed 5 years later it was the same crem and they looked at the records and mums ashes were put in the same place

Hubby passed in 2015 and I have his ashes at home because our local crematorium don’t give you locations of where they spread so I was I need to know where he is !

The instructions are when I go to put both of our ashes together and then it doesn’t matter where in the grounds we go but it’s together <3

Thanks for your thoughts ladies.
Sheila, Im not at all religious and so I dont want a church service of any kind. I had also considered leaving my body to science. In fact when I was recently in hospital, they asked me if I had signed a donor card.

Ann, it's true, everyone has their memories and loved ones are in your heart forever. Its lovely you have a special place in your garden where you spent time together .

My grandads ashes were scattered in the garden of remembrance amongst the roses, his favourite flowers but dad wants his mum to be with him when he passes.

Thats awful Pat to find out you dont know exactly anymore where anyone is.

My mums father's grave was under water regularly when it rained hard!!! Thankfully nothing ever floated to the surface but it was bad management by the council to bury people in that piece of the graveyard. They couldnt move the graves but I think they did drainage work so now it doesnt flood anymore. Was very distressing for mums family to see the ground under water at times years ago.

So I guess, its very much a personal choice and for different reasons as your replies are varied and individual.

Florence in the hebrides

My parents were both cremated and ashes spread on the same lawn at the crematorium. OH parents are buried in the same plot at the cemetery and he goes sometimes as do his sisters.
I don't feel the same as them about visiting graves but I know they feel closer and like to 'chat ' to their parents. Several in laws have ashes kept at home of their loved ones but I don't intend to do that and OH will decide what to do with my ashes if I go first.

I don't want fuss, so just want a direct cremation, no service, trimmings etc. Just the simplest, cheapest package.

Hubby and I spent many hours visiting the graves of ancestors that I didn't even know about until I started my family history research. Some of the headstones gave us extra information about other relatives.. I actually like spending time in cemeteries - they always seem to have a peaceful feeling about them.

Whenever we found a new grave we left flowers with a little card attached with the following poem printed on it and laminated:-

DEAR ANCESTOR

Your tombstone stands out amongst the rest,
Neglected and alone,
The name and date are chiselled out
in polished marble stone.
It reaches out to all who care,
It is too late to mourn
You did not know that I’d exist,
You died then I was born.
Yet each of us is cells of you
In flesh, in blood, in bone.
Our heart contracts, and beats a pulse,
Entirely not our own.
Dear ancestor, the place you filled
One hundred years ago
Spreads out amongst the ones you left
Who would have loved you so.
I wonder how you lived and loved,
I wonder if you knew,
That someday I would find this spot,
And come and visit you.

I want to be cremated and our local cemetery has a section that is paved and has specially built up flower vases on a plinth and this is where cremated remains can be interred.

I used to visit this local cemetery every 1 to 2 months and take flowers to all the family graves (5 in total). These days neither of us is quite so mobile and what with the pandemic we haven't been so often but instead I always buy flowers to have at home on the anniversary of their passing or their birthdays.

I think that if you are happy with the decision that you make for yourself then it shouldn't matter to anyone else.

Kath. x

Gravestones, especially those dating from before censuses and statutory registration, can be very useful for genealogy researchers, as we all know.

However, for myself, I agree with AnninGlos -
"I don't need to hold ashes in the house or to visit graves to remember "

I know my family will feel the same after my death.
I intend to be either
a) cremated and my ashes scattered somewhere in the countryside where I (or at least my ashes) can fly free.
or
b) buried in a woodland cemetery, with a tree planted (preferably a wild cherry) , but no stone.

But you do whatever feels best to you, Florence.
It's the last thing you'll have any control over!

Kathleen - your first para - my OH is like that. He loves the peaceful atmosphere.

He has had 'his plot', as he calls it, chosen and paid for for several years. Near his Grandfather, Dad and brother, but unlike them, I have instructions to make sure he goes straight to the grave without any service anywhere. Like his Mum, I have no intention of going there as she always said, like Florence wrote, that particular cemetery gets a bit waterlogged - certainly muddy underfoot - in heavy rain.

Florence, as my brother told me, if you leave your body to medical science, don't die at weekend as they only collect Monday to Friday! (That was several years ago though when he made that choice.)

The mother of one of my colleagues left her body to med science so the family held a memorial service for her. When they had finished with the body it was cremated and returned to the family (not sure whether it was the science people who cremated the body or the family though). Anyway, my colleague did not bother going down the country (several hours away) for disposal of the ashes as he'd already said his goodbyes.

My brother told me that sometimes the body is never returned and many years later there are pieces still to be found in labs.

So, Florence, I hope you have made your wishes clear in case your body is returned to the family.

You are, however, one step ahead of me as I have not yet decided. I have thought of having my ashes scattered in the waters to the east and to the west of England and, to my surprise, my daughter told me to leave a note to tell her what I want as she'd happily travel east and west to scatter me at sea.

My dad and my brother are in a green woodland cemetery, along with our Mums ashes....
the marker is a nameplate on a tree planted at the head


downside is, its basically a days travel to get there.

By the way, the cemetery keeper (gardener etc) of the cemetery where my paternal grandparents are buried was able to point out where they both were; for my Gran by pacing out from a nearby grave. It was a rough estimate for my Gran (but I now know she is right next to a bush and her grave is on the perimeter next to someone's lovely garden.

I know that my Grandad is immediately to the north of a person who has a gravestone so I know the name to look for.

If they remove the bush I will still know where Gran is but if they remove that person's gravestone, I'd never find Grandad's grave - perhaps I ought to re-visit and make more notes!

My parents were both cremated. Dad had his ashes scattered on the rose garden at the Crem (he loved roses) and Mum asked for hers to be there too. I never had the heart to tell her that the rose garden had been grassed over. I thought it better for her not to know in case it upset her.

Bob, my sister and her OH have already paid for their funerals - no ceremony, cremation with no one there, then ashes taken down south and scattered (I believe) somewhere that the family won't know. I don't know whether her children know about that arrangement yet.

So it will take us a day's travel to get there too, Bob, although it won't be worth going cos no one will never know where the ashes are apparently.

Many village churchyards here have had any gravestones except the big vaults/ memorials, removed and leaned along the edges of the churchyard against walls so you don't even know where they were actually buried unless you get the vicar to show you a map of the plots. It's always seemed disrespectful to me.

I don't want fuss or a service either and have still not decided whether to leave my body to science. Although I prefer memories to be in my head and heart than visit a grave, I would rather like a splendid headstone myself, but when you see what happens to them these days it is depressing. They are useful to genealogists, but most give little information about the person which is what I would like to see. I remember a small, beautifully kept graveyard in Italy years ago that had photos of the person on the gravestones, some set in glass or resin on the headstone and there were candles lit on some at night. The gravestones at a church near where we stayed in Anglesey a few years ago even had the person's last address carved on the headstones. Whatever we decide to do it may not be permanent, especially as populations grow and need more and more land. They dug a lot of graves up here when the railway was laid alongside a cemetry as they hadn't realised how extensive the cemetry was.

Ann, our market place was built on top of the old graveyard. The church is still standing and in use.

The remains were removed to consecrated ground elsewhere but as the archaeologist who worked near me said, there was bound to be some remains left behind as the graves were so ancient. I think of that whenever I’m there.

Yes I can imagine that would stick in your mind whenever you go there Joylouise! It amazes me that the whereabouts of something like a graveyard, like other things really didn't get passed down many generations. My own surprise was them finding Richard 111 buried under the carpark just over the wall surrounding my school playground where we skipped and ran about. I still wonder if there are other graves that are under the road or even our school! I'd better shut up now as I'm going 'off topic!'

My father in law was buried in 1983 and when his dad died in 2010 he was cremated and then his ashes buried with his son. His mum died in 2020 and she too was cremated. At the moment her daughter, Mr Owls aunt Jane still has them in a box however my mother in law has said she will give permission if Jane decides she wants her mum’s ashes buried with her dad and brother.

Mr Owl has outlived his dad so far by 13 years(both of us are still under 40) which is a scary thought but you never know what life will bring. We have discussed what we want and we both want cremated and what happens to our ashes after that is up to family.

A friend of my dad’s lost his mum on New Year’s eve and she was cremated. He and his dad were planning a trip back home to Shetland to scatter her ashes when his dad died just five weeks after his mum. His dad was also cremated and he’s planning the trip alone to scatter both his mum and dad’s ashes on Shetland.