Just curious

Just about every day I drive by the Murray City Cemetery on my way to take my kid to school, go to my mom’s house, to the store or the gym. Almost every single evening I see the same family with their car parked on the side of the road and set up at a grave site a few feet from the curb. This has been going on for several months now.

Many times as I drive by the cemetery I see employees setting up for funerals, families gathered for a funeral, backhoes digging the graves and families visiting graves sites. When holidays occur, the cemetery gets packed with flowers, balloons and other decorations, especially on Memorial Day or Veterans Day. You can tell when it must have been someones birthday or who loved Christmas or Halloween, depending on how a grave site is decorated.

There is something different about his family though. Like I said, they are there every evening. It doesn’t matter if it is good weather, or if it is raining or if there is a foot of snow on the ground. I don’t recall seeing a recent burial in that area, so I’m not sure if this was a recent loss or not, but I would assume it is.

The family is obviously from Pacific Island heritage. This is the only clue I have to why they are there every single day. There are usually three to six people there and they often set up lawn chairs. I want to stop and talk to them. I want to know who this person was and why they are there every day. Is it a cultural thing of some sort? Was it a loss so great they feel compelled to return daily to keep the connection?

I’ve tried a couple of times to snap a picture of them, sorry they are kind of crappy pics.

One of these days I will stop to look at the headstone to see if I can get any more information. I like to walk through cemeteries any way, although I don’t personally understand the need to visit the grave sites of my relatives or place flowers or other decorations at a grave. This subject can fill another entire post, so I will save it for another time.