Visiting the gravesites, beyond the limits of geography, is a very personal preference, I believe. I don’t think I’ve visited my dad’s grave more than two or three times. Of course, when he first died, on this date in 2000, the headstone wasn’t ready.
I know I made at least one trip, maybe two, to the military cemetery 40 miles north of Charlotte, NC, with my mother and at least the sister who lives in North Carolina, and very likely, her daughter.
The last time, I’m sure, was when my mother died in 2011. Both of my sisters and their daughters, my wife and MY daughter all attended the burial. She’s interred next to dad, and the headstone has now been replaced to represent both of them, with information on each side. I’ve actually never seen mom’s side of the headstone, except in photographs.
But my dad wasn’t much on that type of sentimentality. His mom died in the early 1960s, about a decade before he moved from Binghamton, NY to North Carolina. I have no recollection of taking us to visit her grave in the Floral Avenue Cemetery in Johnson City, NY. And I just can’t imagine him going on his own.
Indeed, I didn’t even remember – or more correctly, misremembered – where she was buried until about three years ago, which I wrote about.
Spring Forest Cemetery in Binghamton I went by virtually every single weekday growing up. It’s three or four blocks from the house I grew up in, and even closer to my maternal grandmother’s house, where I went each school day for lunch. we used to cut through the cemetery to play baseball at Ansco field.
My paternal grandfather died in 1980, and he’s buried in Spring Forest, or at least I think so. I doubt my father ever made a trek up to Binghamton to visit the grave.
So I guess I’m trying to make myself feel less guilty – guilty may be overstating it – about not going to what is now my parents’ gravesite. I DO have pictures.
I always feel ashamed when I visit my husband’s grave, because I don’t do that more than two or three times a year. So don’t feel guilty that you are not a regular visitor to the cemetary either.
I agree it’s a personal thing. I’m not sure I would choose to do it. I’ve seen my maternal grandmother’s headstone (closest relative of those who have passed) once. (Granted, she is buried some 1000 miles from where I live now, but even if it were close, I think I’d only go out of a sense of needing to for it to “look proper” to others).
Because of logistics, my mother could not make it to one of her sister’s funerals (again: long distances, other family member closer was unwell and needed help). Her sister’s daughter remarked: it mattered more that you called her every few days during her last months, I am happier you were there for her when she needed you.
I also feel the same way about people choosing or not choosing to keep cremains (“ashes”) of loved ones. I’d not want to. I prefer to remember those I love with photographs of them, photos taken during happy times when they were healthy and doing well.
My mother lived in the same county where everyone in the family is buried and visited and decorated the graves all the time. She and my uncle had these complicated arrangements about who went when and who could leave what and where they could leave it. The last time my brother and I went to the cemetery to see her and Dad’s graves, he confessed to me: “I never know what to do when I get here, but I feel like I’m supposed to come.” It’s about an hour and a half from Louisville, so I can’t get down there all the time, but I do try to make one trip a year, sometime in the summer. That feels right to me.