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| Memorial offerings removed from grave markers in our local cemetery. |
A recent incident in the community where I live really
brought home the trauma that many experience at the death of a loved one and
how the grieving process is not widely understood or acknowledged by officials who caretake cemeteries.
Our community has three cemeteries, the newest of these is
the only one where new internments can be accepted. There is a municipal cemetery bylaw that limits memorial
offerings placed on grave markers to cut flowers only. However, in the history of this cemetery,
this bylaw has never been enforced and the only items removed were ones that
interfered with grounds maintenance crews doing their job. Memorial offerings placed on the grave
markers or in the four inch flower receptacles on each concrete grave base were
left undisturbed.
Recently, municipal staff made the decision to hold a
“clean-up” and posted two advertisements in the local newspaper advising
the public that they would be enforcing the bylaw and of the planned clean-up - very few people noticed the ads.
During the clean-up, maintenance staff removed every memorial offering
and made judgement calls on what they considered worth keeping and what to
discard. The items they kept were
placed in on the ground in a works yard so people could retrieve them. Items they deemed worthless or were
accidentally broken during the clean-up were sent to the municipal landfill.
The public’s response was immediate and profound. Municipal Council was inundated with
phone calls, letters were written to the editor of local newspapers, people
appeared before Council to voice their anger and sorrow.
To their credit, the Mayor and Council were as shocked and
outraged by this action by Municipal staff as the public was and most offered
sincere apologies for their staff’s actions.
Losing a loved one can be a truly traumatic experience for
many - and I am speaking of clinical trauma, the same shock to the mind and
body that combat soldiers, abuse, or rape survivors experience. The initial experience of those who
have a loved one die can be identical to the symptoms of Acute Traumatic
Stress Disorder; numbing; detachment;
derealization; continued re-experiencing of the event through thoughts, dreams,
and flashbacks; avoidance of any stimulation that reminds them of the event;
symptoms of anxiety. If Acute Truamatic
Stress is not therapeutically addressed, it can - in many cases - become Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder after 30 days.
The stages and process of grief have been well documented by
such notable clinicians as psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D. who categorized the 5 stages of the grieving process;
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- Depression
- Acceptance
It is the fifth stage - Acceptance - that is the most important for an individual to navigate through successfully
to be able to integrate the trauma of losing someone they love, reorganize, and
move forward in life.
Part of the Acceptance stage is for the affected
individual to be able to personally memorialize their lost loved-one. For many, this memorialization must be
more than purchasing a grave marker and holding a funeral - this is evidenced
by the number of memorial offerings removed from our cemetery by municipal
staff. Each of those items were
placed there by those who sought to memorialize their loved one on a personal
and emotional level. The psychological
process of this memorializing is to relocate their loved one from within their
own life story to their loved one’s grave, and accept that they are no longer
alive.
The removal of those memorial offerings - putting it bluntly
- retraumatized many of the people who placed them there. The most moving example of this was one lady who
had planted a miniature rose in the four inch receptacle of her husband’s
grave marker and tended it weekly each Sunday after church for the past
year. This lady was still in the
process of working through the Acceptance stage by doing this, and when she
discovered to her horror that the rose had been pulled up by its roots and discarded, her
trauma resurfaced.
The lady had the courage to attend the next Municipal
Council meeting and address them during the public hearing portion. As she spoke of her shock and distress of
discovering that the miniature rose had been torn up by the roots and
discarded, her emotions were as raw and intense as the day her husband died -
her grieving process was not only interrupted, but reverted to a previous
stage. She was experiencing the
trauma of her husband’s death once again.
I have urged our Mayor and Council to take the psychology of
grief into consideration when examining the cemetery bylaws and district policy
in the coming months. Municipal staffs’ suggestion to landscape the cemetery by adding plantings of “colour” is
all well and good, but will not replace the personal memorialization that helps people
heal from the trauma of losing a loved one.
On a personal note; A well-tended cemetery - to me - appears
sanitized and impersonal, but seeing the small memorial offerings left and
tended on grave markers speaks of the love family members still hold for the
significant people they have lost.
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