As a freshman in my Explore Chicago class at DePaul, our class visited Rosehill towards the end of October. The signs were up, warning people about the spring and fall cleanup seasons, and there were trash bags full of artificial flowers and other grave decorations strewn about all over. My gut feeling said that this was wrong, but only a few years later, I’d be regularly clearing items from Inez Briggs’s monument. Of course, these items weren’t going to be thrown away (at least not for a while), but the taboo feeling stuck the whole way through.
Every cemetery has different policies and approaches to grave gifts, and they typically reserve the right to remove any items at their discretion. Graceland Cemetery and Arboretum has this clause in their decoration policies, though there is no specific date or time for clean-ups. Instead, they have one policy for the growing season, and another for the non-growing season. The first time I went to collect Inez’s gifts, I couldn’t get a clear answer on the last time anyone had cleared it. However, she gets several gifts per week, so I’m sure it hadn’t been too long ago. Other cemeteries have dedicated clean-up periods, like Rosehill, and there’s even a few that make full-on press releases to notify families about these dates.
It shouldn’t be surprising to know that grave gifts get thrown away, and people who have bought in-ground plots from a cemetery are expected to read these policies before they buy. In general, though, the removal & clean-up process creates a fascinating shift where a gift or a decoration set to commemorate someone is transformed into garbage, impersonally mixed into a trash bag with everyone else’s gifts. A small controversy around grave gifts occurred back in 2019 at Gilroes Cemetery, where the Leicester City Council banned teddy bears from being placed on graves in the children’s section, upsetting several parents (Owen, 2019). They walked the decision back not too long after it was implemented.
However, the removal of these items is not arbitrary. Mainly, the issues stem from the weather and from space. Rain can make soft items like stuffed animals become moldy, and wind can move items into spaces they weren’t intended for. Also, with each grave taking up a limited amount of space, decorations might end up on graves they were not intended for. If there’s too many decorations, it can also affect the quality of the lawn care that can occur. These factors end up affecting the cemetery’s aesthetic, which can be a key reason for why people choose to buy plots in the first place; nobody wants their family or friends to be buried somewhere ugly. For Graceland in particular, the aesthetic is integral, and was designed by famed landscape architects like William LeBaron Jenney and O. C. Simonds during the rural cemetery movement (Vernon, 2011). Today, the overall aesthetic of Graceland is a key appeal for visitors and plot owners, and the prolonged presence of decorations can skew this.
Decoration policies can change over time, too, with most cemeteries reserving the right to make these changes without notifying lot owners¹. Looking back to older editions of Graceland’s policies, there are clauses banning the use of items like jars, styrofoam, or toys (amongst other things) as decorations, and artificial flowers were not permitted during the growing season (Regulations). On a broader scale, a 1918 copy of the rules & regulations includes points like “No horse shall be left on the grounds unfastened,” and “All bags and baskets must be left at the entrance,” (Contract, 1918). As the years have gone by, several shifts in attitudes and technology have changed what is considered acceptable cemetery behavior. For example, people today tend to leave artificial flowers at Graceland year-round without much fuss.
I remember seeing the bags full at Rosehill and wondering how many pounds of gifts there were. I felt a second round of reflection on this once I was finished collecting Inez’s gifts, and recorded how many of them were fully or partially plastic. Even the switch to biodegradable items might not be enough, because organic materials can be prevented from breaking down in landfills (Earth Talk, 2019). On the upside, there are ways to decorate that are more sustainable. Within my own family, we collect our vases and other decorations a few weeks before the cleaning period to continually use them over the years. We also try to buy decorations that are safe for the wildlife to eat, so they hopefully won’t need to be collected later on.
Still, this is only what happens within my family, and changing our collective interactions with grave decorations to become more sustainable is a hard sell for anyone who wants something more permanent. In these instances, some cemeteries can be flexible about certain items. Anecdotally, Graceland has kept items for people who request it- like if you’re out of town and don’t think you can pick up the items before the cleaning happens. There have also been instances where if an item seems particularly valuable, they might be kept in storage, like a fancy vase that maybe looks a bit too delicate to be outdoors.
As this post is going live, Graceland, like many other cemeteries, will have started their fall cleanings. If you have anything you’d want to keep from a loved one’s grave, it is important to know your cemetery’s decoration policies to avoid items being thrown away.
Footnotes
¹ Logistically, contacting every plot owner about every change that is made to these policies is nearly impossible. Owners are expected to update their contact information with the cemetery when it changes, but this doesn’t always happen. In addition to this, some policies need to be implemented quickly, and trying to contact owners could inhibit this process. For example, at the start of 2020, social distancing policies needed to be put in place because there was a large increase in visitorship during that time.
Sources
(1918). [Graceland Cemetery Contract for Lot Owners]. Copy in possession of Graceland Cemetery and Arboretum.
EarthTalk. (2023, April 5). Do biodegradable items degrade in landfills? ThoughtCo. Retrieved October 4, 2024, from https://www.thoughtco.com/do-biodegradable-items-really-break-down-1204144
Owen, D. (2019, February 26). Teddy bear tributes banned from communal children’s Graves. Leicestershire Live. https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/teddy-bear-tributes-banned-communal-2582911
Regulations for cemetery decorations. Copy in possession of Graceland Cemetery and Arboretum.
Vernon, C. (2011). Graceland cemetery: A design history. University of Massachusetts Press. https://archive.org/details/gracelandcemeter0000vern/