Panel: Arlington cemetery should tighten grave rules

[unhappycamper]

http://hamptonroads.com/2013/11/panel-arlington-cemetery-should-tighten-grave-rules

Panel: Arlington cemetery should tighten grave rules
By Patricia Sullivan
The Washington Post
© November 21, 2013

WASHINGTON

Arlington National Cemetery's relaxed policy on personal mementos left at the graves of those killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should be stopped by the end of 2014, an advisory commission recommended Tuesday to the secretary of the Army.

The committee, led by Max Cleland, a disabled Vietnam veteran and former U.S. senator, said it was fitting to end the exception to the cemetery-wide policy — which allows only flowers and small photographs at grave markers — as troops are withdrawn from Afghanistan.

Families of service members buried in the cemetery's Section 60 objected this fall when grounds crews began removing laminated photos, colored stones and other personal items that had been left at grave sites. Someone had epoxied a ceramic commemorative coin to the back of a headstone, and other grave sites were adorned with collections of personally significant items, including football helmets, letters, liquor bottles and painted stones.

A truce, negotiated in October, allowed families with loved ones in Section 60, where the fallen from Iraq and Afghanistan are buried, to leave a small photo and a handmade memento on the graves through April, when the cemetery resumes its normal grass-cutting routine.

[Aristus]

1. I agree with this.

While I can sympathize with families who express their grief by leaving elaborate mementos at the grave sites, I think it can lead to distracting displays. Displays that, as the article states, decrease the solemnity of the cemetery. I could imagine that many of the people buried there might appreciate the cemetery's neat, spic-and-span military tidiness, and would want it to stay that way. I know I would if I were buried there. (I'm a veteran of the Gulf War, and was a neatnik long before I enlisted.)

"This is part of our grieving process," said Paula Davis, whose son Justin is buried there. "It might be generational. We personalize the graves. We don't just stand there and pray."

My response to that is: the graves are already personalized by name, dates of birth and death, and the place where the fallen had served. Putting up Christmas lights and little Jimmy Jr.'s first grade art projects seems a little out of keeping.

If that seems insensitive, consider what it would be like if the members of the Old Guard, the infantrymen intensively trained to guard the cemetery and conduct funeral services there were permitted to wear on duty mementos from girlfriends, lucky bandanas, rattly jewelry, a favorite pair of ragged jeans. All because "they mean so much to me."

[TwilightGardener]

2. If my husband was to be buried at a national cemetery, I wouldn't want to see

what basically amounts to junk and clutter lying around. It's a cemetery, have some fucking respect--that means no liquor bottles and football helmets. The dead person isn't giving a shit about the crap you leave on his grave. This goes for ALL cemeteries, IMO. Plastic flowers and pinwheels and faded photos--gah. Cheapens what should be a dignified, solemn piece of ground.

[madaboutharry]

3. I have to agree with you.

Expressions of grief are about what we have lost, and I do not believe that the dead are aware of our gestures. I'm a believer in the "This is the end, lights out" crowd. And I think that cemeteries, especially a military cemetery, should maintain an atmosphere of solemnity and dignity.

[Agnosticsherbet]

4. Grief is for the living, and if it helps the living move though the stages of grief

they should be allowed to leave whatever they want in the cemetery. The men and women in those graves are past all need of solemnity and dignity.