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Give Meaning To The Gravestones, And Respect Will Follow

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By KRIS DIGIOVANNI

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 28, 2008

Death hasn't touched them yet. That's why two teenagers thought vandalizing Sunset Meadows Memorial Park would be "fun."

To them, the cemetery was just a place full of "things." They felt no connection to it. Graves and headstones have not yet come into their lives in a personal way. Their grandparents might still be around - maybe none of their relatives has been killed in an automobile crash - and perhaps none of their school friends has died from gang violence. To these boys, death has not yet become real.

I remember as a young child going to the cemetery with my grandparents on what they called "Decoration Day," not Memorial Day, to place flowers on the graves of their parents - people who had died before I was born. To me, the cemetery was just an odd, strangely pretty park. I had no real concept of death yet.

A few years later, I held my breath every time our car passed a cemetery so I would not "be the next to die," according to the childhood proverb. It was a silly game we all played. As a good Catholic, I received the obligatory forehead smudge each Ash Wednesday, and listened to the priest intone, "Remember thou are dust and to dust thou shalt return." It was just a ceremony. I never actually connected it to myself or to my own mortality.

It wasn't until I was 16 and my grandfather died unexpectedly at age 65, that death came to visit me personally. That was when I came to know the incredible strangeness of a person's absence from life.

Suddenly someone who had always been there simply wasn't. His shaving things were still on the counter. His clothes were still folded neatly in the drawer. His Instant Sanka still was in the cupboard. Many times I walked into the room to start a conversation with my dear "Pompy" only to be shocked once again by his empty chair.

Gradually, very gradually, his not being there became more familiar, and the finality of death more real. It took a long time.

In the years since then, there have been many more deaths to deal with. There have been many more cemeteries to get acquainted with, graves to visit and flowers to place. As an amateur genealogist, I've even sought out the obscure resting places of relatives who came before me. To me, as will happen to these young boys someday, a cemetery has become a place to connect.

It's a place where memories of a real flesh-and-blood person can flood back with an intensity that may not be possible elsewhere. It's a permanent reminder that this person once walked the Earth, breathed the same air and sat under the same sky. It's a place where the contemplation of one's own death can become a little less scary.

These young boys, to whom death does not yet have meaning, should be made to pay restitution for their damages. But they should also be sentenced to visiting each of the families that had a loved one's grave desecrated. They should be made to listen to stories of who that person was - how they laughed and talked and lived their lives, and what they meant to their family. Then perhaps they will come to know that what seemed like harmless fun to them was like a second death to each family affected.

Then perhaps, they will be able to be truly sorry for what they have done.

Kris DiGiovanni teaches in Pasco County, her second career after 15 years in information services.

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