To be tending to this grave?

[LadyRue]

About a year ago I started walking through a (well lit) graveyard on my way home from work. It’s a huge shortcut and it’s actually a very nice green space.

Just off the path I noticed a grave of a young girl, fourteen who I believe had died of cancer possibly or some illness as the engrave said about her being “incredibly” brave. She has died in 1999 and isn’t much older than myself.

Anyways, her grave was very dirty and covered in weeds. So the next time I went through I cleaned it up, then I started to lay flowers to brighten it up, and change them. On her birthday, I took a lovely bouquet and ended up leaving them for five weeks as I was in hospital. I went back, they were still there and cleaned them up.

Now it’s Christmas. I was considering going to lay some poinsettias or even perhaps a little light up tree. I’m not sure why I’m doing this, I guess I feel sad to see a child’s grave so abandoned. I’m 99% sure there isn’t anyone tending to it.

However, my friend thinks I’m an absolute “freak” and has told me to stop as I’m overstepping the mark. So perhaps I should? I don’t know!

Super weird to appropriate the family's grief and make a stranger's long ago death about you. Why should her grave be your space to put on a show of pretending to care about her/working through whatever emotional issues are causing you to react like this? Let her memory rest.

There are people who do things like this. I watched something about a woman who is tidying up neglected graves in one cemetery. Weeding, type things and she always leaves flowers. However really you do need to leave the gravestone alone as it can case deterioration of the stone.

This is something I would do op ❤️
You're not vandalising it, you're showing respect and care for a complete stranger.
You sound lovely x

Thank you for caring, @LadyRue
My DH is buried 175 miles from where I now live (had to move to care for late mum) I would be so pleased to think that someone is keeping his grave tidy.

It's very kind of you since the family cant/don't wish to visit the grave. Its always sad to see rows of well kept graves , inbetween there being neglected ones. Keep it tidy and get rid of weeds, lay some flowers but like other pps, I agree no Christmas tree, lights etc.
Oh and take no notice of those saying you're a weirdo with "issues ".Caring for someone/something is not the same as beinga weirdo.
Well not in real life anyway 😉

I pick up litter and recently tidied a tiny garden that belongs to some flats down the road form me because idiots were using it as a rubbish dump. I also do volunteer gardening for a local church doing exactly what OP is doing - I can't wait to hear what you think my emotional issues are that I'm working through; or why you think OP is 'pretending.'

Perhaps the simple answer is that we're both more altruistic than you.

I think it's a nice thing to do.
Have you tried to find about about her at all?

So you told your friend about it, and now you’re on line looking for “oh aren’t you lovely” comments?

Brave teenage girls dying from (in your imagination) cancer are so much more appealing that fat blokes in their 50s dying from heart disease, aren’t they?

I think it’s grief tourism and virtue signalling rolled into one as soon as you started telling people.

If OP wants to do a litter pick or join a volunteer group doing maintenance that's great and 10/10 for giving back to the community. But they aren't. They are repeatedly visiting and interfering with the grave of one specific stranger because they've imagined a scenario based on a headstone and become emotionally invested in that scenario to the point they think a stranger's grave is an appropriate place to put up christmas decorations because it would make them happy and they're putting their own feelings about it ahead of the fact they don't know this girl or her family or why they might have chosen to let the grave rest rather than putting up christmas lights on it.

Blimey, someone's full of the Christmas spirit.

OP - ignore the small minded people projecting their own miserable outlook onto you and what you're doing.

Tidying is fine but I would be angry and uncomfortable if a stranger left flowers on my daughter's grave, like they were using my daughter's death to make themselves feel virtuous or emotional.

@nosyupnorth I'm sure you feel better now you've got that off your chest.

I think it is lovely op. My daughter’s grave is half a day’s travel away, so we only get to see her twice a year at most. It breaks my heart to see her so overgrown. Once (when we lived close to her) someone had watered the plants that I had planted for her. I was so touched that someone cared.

“Blimey, someone's full of the Christmas spirit.”

Could you let me know the dates we have to seasonally change our opinions please? Is it like an Advent thing? 🤣

I don't see any problem with it op. It's no different to the business services that you can hire to clean graves and put down flowers for you.

It's very different, people actively choose these services.

I think it's intrusive tbh, it's not your business why a grave hasn't been cleaned and it absolutely does not mean nobody visits.

It's a lovely thing to do. Near my parents grave is the grave of their neighbours. I know the daughter and son both live hours away. Every time I go to my parents grave I always tidy and leave flowers at their neighbours. Strange to think they were neighbours in life and now also in the grave yard. What you are doing is not weird, it's very thoughtful.

As children we sometimes laid wild flowers on old graves. These were very old and long forgotten graves, though.

But I think it's a nice thing you're doing. Though I would confine it to weed clearing and occasional flowers, personally.

I think it's a lovely thought. Perhaps add a little message next time you leave flowers so if family do visit they aren't left wondering who looks after the grave.

I think it's very much a personal thing. I've read stories of people doing this for years then finding out the person in the grave wasn't being visited because they had done horrific things to other people, but this is just a child. It is however someone else's child and you don't know why the relatives may not be tending it. Perhaps make some enquiries at the relevant offices to see what you can find out about the family. See if they are still about. They could have emigrated find it too painful to visit. There could be any reason that it seems intended now.

It’s a beautiful act of kindness… It could be that the relatives live too far away to tend the grave or perhaps there are no relatives left… Either way, you are doing a kind thing, and have been led by following your heart to start taking care of this neglected grave. Because of you OP that child hasn’t been forgotten.

It’s a really lovely thing to do, and ignore any criticism from ‘friends’. Your doing a good thing.

I think it’s nice to keep it from being totally overgrown with gentle weeding, but I agree with PPs that flowers and definitely the Christmas tree and lights is too much. It does seem too intimate and intrusive however kindly you mean it but it’s imposing too much if your own taste and personality. I actually find the sight of decomposed flowers on a grave quite upsetting so I wouldn’t want that for my family’s graves. We’re all different.

Leave room for the family for if they visit and maybe light a candle at home if it helps you.

Ooh I'm not sure. I only visit my husband's grave 2-3 times a year and I pass it on the way to work every day but I know he's at peace and I only visit on the anniversary of his death, his birthday if I am around and our wedding anniversary if I am around. I'd upset if someone had done something to.the grave in that time.

@testina Absolutely not. I happened to see this grave as it’s on my route, I only go to this side of the graveyard. I don’t go to the other side and it’s the only one in a complete section of “tended” graves. It caught my eye because of the age, also the long epigraph and also because it stands out as being so overgrown and untended.

I haven’t imagined any “illness”. It says that the child had a “incredibly brave battle”. I don’t think it’s a jump to imagine some kind of sickness? I’m also not looking for a god complex, I saw another thread about someone else walking through a graveyard, and with Christmas coming up I thought I may leave something again but wasn’t sure this time after what my friend said.

and regarding the “50 year old bloke with heart disease comment” I probably would’ve gone by and thought “oh god, 50 is terribly young etc”.

Your heart is in the right place, but you may possibly be overstepping here.

In my culture we don't tend to graves at all and there are significant cultural reasons for that so I would be upset if someone took it upon themselves to do that. There would also be no way for the family to contact you to let you know they don't want you to do it.

Two of my children have died and although I talked things over with my elders and decided on cremation for them, had I decided on graves I would be devastated.

The problem is that you just don't know the family history, reasons or anything else about this girl, but have started making decisions on the families behalf, and inserting yourself into their grief a bit by making their daughter and her grave a project.

As bereaved parents most of us get a lot of grief tourism, and, sorry op, but this does feel a bit like that, although you're coming from a place of kindness, you should step back and think of the possible repercussions for the people who knew and loved her.

Also, just want to point out, in the space of a year I’ve only left two bouquet of flowers and cleaned it once! I’m not there every week doing this! Or even every month!