Visiting graves . . . did you do it? (page 3)

Undecided

I didn't when I was a JW but I enjoy it now. My brother and I took a day to find our old family graveyard, we had forgotten exactly where it was. It took us half a day to find it. My grandparents on my dad's side are buried there, and also my dad, but there is no headstone or anyway to find just where in the gravesite they are burried. There are several of my old family relatives that go way back in time there as well as many slave graves with just a rock to mark the grave. I wish I could find some of the history of this site.

There is another grave site near where my Grandparents lived back in the 20s. Some of them dated back to the early 1800s. Some of the headstones are carved in a rock. There are several slave graves here also. I would love to know the history of this place.

Ken P.

love11

I didn't go and visit anyone I ever knew. But as a young adult, if I ever was driving around and needed a good cry I would pull into a cemetary. That seems like the only place that it's ok to cry in public and I just figured at the time, they were the only people who wouldn't judge me.

As a child I used to visit my great grandparents home every weekend, yet when they died we never went to see their graves except for the actual funeral. That always seemed really cold to me.

prophecor

I've visited the grave of my father and my favorite uncle who's burried in the same cemetery, on several occasions. He wasn't a witness, and actually died in Florida. He and his new wife had made a new life for themselves there.

His funeral and remains were buried here, however. I try to make a trek to his gravesite on fathers day and on his birthday, which falls in September, the start of my favorite season, Autumn. I spend time in quiet reflection there. It's a little odd as I stare at his marker with his name on it, I'm a junior so we have the same name. We were never really close so I don't go back with a lot of sadness, though I've always wanted to be close to him, I think I've found his life inside of my own as I'm older. I really understand now for the first time, why he's felt the way I often do. His aloofness, his seeming distance, why he was such a tortured soul.

He was the first one to start us going to the Kingdom Hall, long before I ever knew what being in "The Truth" was. Stranger still is that when I was baptized, it happened to fall on his birthday. I'll always have a reference point to look back in history to denote the day of my baptism.

I often wonder if he ever felt lost because he never took to" the truth", if the guilt he may've been carrying was because he was never able to follow in the footsteps of the witnesses. I wonder as well if my coming into the truth was my own way of trying to connect to him as well. He was the one who started down the same road, many years before I would ever know anything about Jehovah's Witnesses, starting with that crazy titled blue book.

Balsam

Shoot my I did, all the time after my folks passed. Even when my Father-In-Law died I visited his grave and his Catholic wife wouldn't go. I always felt a strong need to recognize those who travel the hereafter before me. I visit my son's grave almost every time I travel to the town where he is buried and try to keep flowers on it.

Being a JW for 30 years, can't say I heard of others doing as I did, but so far as I know there was no tabu on it that I am aware of.

Balsam

minimus

NEVER! They couldn't hear us. They were dead.

sonnyboy

We did occasionally, but I never really saw the point. I guess some people do it as part of the mourning process, but it makes you feel even worse when you're standing over the rotting body of a loved one. I'd rather remember people as they were, not as a tombstone.

garybuss

I take my potting spade and a hand edge tool and a bucket and I edge the markers that need it. Some of the flush markers can have sod on them an inch or more all the way around. My mother's parents and her sister and her husband are buried on the same plot and someone visits those graves regularly and does a nice job of keeping those sites trim and live flowers planted.

Must be one of my cousins or their kids. I kinda wish I knew. Except for my mother's brother, my mother's side of the family were all too smart to get mixed up with the Jehovah's Witness group.

Country_Woman

sometimes, from my parents, when I am in the neighbourhood

someone has to keep the place tidy

One of my brothers is going on their birthday and on their dying day to do the same.

LongHairGal

Your post brought back memories (but not dub related).

I must have been a morbid little girl. When I was young my family (not dubs) spent time in New England which is chock full of old cemeteries. I loved to go looking through them and still do. It was amazing to look at old old headstones and wonder what the neighborhood looked like in those days. I guess in the span of time we are nothing.

Country_Woman

exit of the cemetary in Goedereede - The Netherlands (it is containing 1 war grave)

Visiting graves . . . did you do it?

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