How it All Began
Shanna Riley February 12th, 2008
A question on a Flickr group, Graves, Tombs and Cemeteries, I recently joined asked how everyone's fascination with cemeteries began.
I didn't even have to think about my answer - I knew it immediately. I thought, for anyone that comes here and was wondering the same, I'd share the response I posted there:
It was the old Catholic tradition, known as All Saints' Day, of honoring deceased loved ones by cleaning their graves and bringing fresh flowers to them on or before November 1st that began my love of cemeteries.
My Cajun great-grandmother, Melina, and grandmother, Dorothy, had many family members buried out in Avoyelles Parish at Immaculate Conception Church Cemetery in Dupont and Mater Dolorosa Catholic Cemetery in Plaucheville. We - Melina, Dorothy, my mother, Pamela, myself, and my little sister, Amber - returned there every year on or before Nov. 1 to clean the graves and bring colorful chrysanthemums.
On Halloween itself, we would clean the graves and bring chrysanthemums to our family in the local cemetery in Maringouin, Louisiana which were mostly my grandfather, Riley's, people.
As the grown-ups worked with weeding, washing, and tidying up the headstones and around the family plots, we children would play for hours among the graves.
To me, a precocious, imaginative child, every headstone was a story and I spent much time imagining what the person had been like in life and what they had done with their time on Earth.
These were, also, quiet, peaceful, and contemplative times spent with three older generations of the women in my family as we honored our family gone on before us and are - to this today - some of my most cherished memories.
My love of cemeteries was borne of these times and has never diminished.
- A Graver's Thoughts
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