Fresh Ideas: Ancient tradition ensures the dead are not left behind

The church service at the Latvian section of the cemetery in Grand Rapids, Mich., began promptly at 10 a.m. Aug. 1. My 91-year-old aunt and I, dressed in summer skirts, linen blouses and wearing heels, placed our lawn chairs beneath the towering oaks that shade most of the cemetery.

The gravestones in the Latvian section wear headdresses of flowers: begonias, day lilies, alyssum, petunias, marigolds, sedum. These flowers are planted, watered, trimmed of dead blooms, and weeded weekly throughout spring, summer and fall by living relatives or their representatives. One woman I know willed her house as payment to a man who has been tending to her grave ever since. As my good aunt puts it whenever she sees a neglected gravestone, "This is unforgivable."

The best way to understand the importance of a properly cared for gravestone is to imagine it as the departed's beloved face. The gravestone dare not be sunken into the ground as if it doesn't have a neck. Neither grass nor weeds dare encroach upon the cheeks of its face. Flowers, like hair, must be kept off the forehead. This necessitates careful planting: No high mounds of earth that will crumble down with the first rain and smudge the name. The gravestone needs to be wiped clean and the name and dates engraved upon it brushed free of debris with a toothbrush.

There are probably 300-400 Latvians buried here. I recognize many and know many of their stories. The present congregation has dwindled to about 100. On this particular Sunday, there are about 70 of us in attendance, which my aunt says is very good. But that's because "kapu svetki" (cemetery festival) is a special annual church service. Our Latvian minister, a

35-year-old woman born and educated in Latvia but now married to an American, tells us that Latvians and Estonians are unique among nations in respect to this tradition. And it's at this service that all "new" gravestones receive their proper, official blessing.

After the service, everyone socialized. It seems to me that to Latvians a cemetery is not relegated to the dead; the dead are not left behind. Instead, the cemetery is a kind of bridge to the living. The door between the two worlds is somehow open. And although tending to these graves as Latvians do may seem excessive, my aunt says it reflects the belief that the departed continue to partake of life every time we water the flowers and let our fingers trace the letters of our beloved's name.

• Ursula Carlson, Ph.D., teaches writing and literature at Western Nevada College.