Have you visited a loved one’s gravesite recently and felt you might like to spruce it up? Many of us feel it’s important to decorate or maintain the site. It’s our way of honoring ancestors and feeling an earthly connection to them.
Visiting loved ones’ graves is something our family often does during Memorial Weekend. It’s a big tradition in parts of Idaho and Utah. In addition to honoring our fallen military and veterans, we honor our ancestors too.
Free Printables to Decorate Graves
Since most of us leave a bouquet of flowers during our visit, I thought it would be a nice touch to design some floral-pick printables for you to add to the blooms. Use these cute printables in the flowers, or just poke them in the ground to add a nice, sentimental touch. Our zip file include three designs you’ll love: Together Forever, Remembered & Loved, May God Bless & Keep You. Each saying is designed in a collage: two smaller images and one large. So each page gives you three options.
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This is one of the free printable options, especially perfect for military. Click here to download.
When I was a child, we used to visit my hometown cemetery a few times a year, but especially Memorial Weekend. My mom and I would pick fresh lilacs from our yard and arrange them in vases. She always grew a beautiful garden, so we’d add other blooms as well. Now that I have my own children, we still often visit a cemetery or two for Memorial Day. We have to travel a bit to get to my hometown now, but my husband’s family has loved ones buried nearby.
And I’ve started a few new traditions for us. When we visit a cemetery, we often see the need to clean our ancestors’ gravestones and sites. It’s a great way to involve the kids and keep them busy, and it’s an important act of service for the deceased.
Products to Clean a Gravesite
With a few products on hand, you can do a quick, impressive cleanup of your loved one’s gravesite.
- Polish. We recommend these simple granite stone wipes. They’re easy to store in your vehicle and can be used on your countertops at home when not in use at the cemetery. At the very least, we bring a jug of water and some old towels to clean the headstones.
- Sweep. A small brush broom and dustpan are great to have on hand in the vehicle anyway. Pull them out to do a quick sweep around the stones.
- Rake. A few of our family members’ headstones are located under pine trees. There are always a bazillion pine cones, so we go prepared to rake them up. This is a great tool, and it’s awesome in the garden to rake up leaves and debris under the bushes at home.
- Toss. Bring a few garbage bags or grocery sacks to throw away the debris.
- Water. We visit some remote cemeteries where the water isn’t always turned on. Flowers placed at the graves often look wilted on Memorial Weekend. So we water them, helping them to look fresh throughout the weekend so that anyone who visits will see beautiful arrangements.
- Organize. Arrange everything into a bucket, and you have an easy cleaning kit to take with you to the cemetery any time.
Be sure to take pictures of your family at the cemetery and share with any extended family members who couldn’t be there. You might even include them in a family scrapbook. The family traditions you start or continue with your children will likely be traditions they will pass on to their children someday.
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