<p>My father’s headstone gives his birthdate and the date of his death. He is buried there. My mother’s name is also there with her date of birth and waiting for her date of death. She was cremated and her internment was with a sister in a different state. (their deaths were 52 years apart and she had not lived in the city where my father is buried for decades).</p>
<p>One of my sibs is suggesting that this beautiful black granite headstone (also has all 5 kids names on the back as family) be replaced with a new one without my mothers name. My mother was very proud of this headstone as when she bought it she was raising 5 kids with very few resources. She left no directions as to what to do (about anything!)
My sib has a passion for genealogy and need to be technically correct.</p>
<p>Has anyone had a situation such as this? Seen a headstone with a burial and a cremation
where the ashes are not with the burial person?</p>
<p>Thanks for any information.</p>
<p>Sib seems to think there is a question regarding whether the internment information can be added. Sib would feel the information as to where the ashes are would need to be there and not just add the date of death. This is because future generations need to know where our mother’s ashes are physically. None of this makes much sense to me–I would just add the death date/the internment info.
Sib is personality disordered but this still must be navigated.</p>
<p>I would think there would be nothing wrong with just adding your mother’s date of death to the existing marker, even if her actual remains are not there. Replacing an existing marker with a new one would be very costly. Maybe your sibling does not know how costly headstones and markers are.</p>
<p>I am not sure about the ‘rules’ for this type of thing. The cemetary where our family plot is located does have rules for placement of markers, etc.</p>
<p>My mother died about 5 years ago and she was cremated. We spread her ashes at the beach as she requested. We did have a cenotaph (headstone where no body is present) put on the family plot with her name and date of birth/death. The cenotaph also has my fathers name and date of birth. When he dies we will add his date of death. </p>
<p>It was important to me to have a marker for my parents in the family plot and my mother wanted it. It seems to me that your mother expected to have her date of death added and that is what I would do.</p>
<p>Oregon, I don’t have a personality disorder that I’m aware of, but as a genealogist I have the same reaction as your sibling. Try to understand our perspective: if you went to Westminster Abbey and saw the burial site of Elizabeth I, or you go to Arlington Cemetery but years later you’re told none of those people are really buried there, wouldn’t you feel somehow deceived? Genealogists respect family history in the same way, and to us, a burial stone with no burial is tantamount to manufacturing evidence. 200 years from now one of her descendants will make a pilgrimage to see the grave, and everything will be messed up and garbled. It takes away the credibility of the other records. You wouldn’t know what to believe. </p>
<p>I just want to let you know your sibling’s viewpoint might be pretty widely held among genealogists - not just those with personality disorders. </p>
<p>The ideal answer would be to add the death date to the stone your mom treasured, and relocate the stone to the actual gravesite. I don’t know how expensive that would be, however.</p>
<p>Burial issues are evolving all the time. Cremation is becoming more popular and I believe a cemetery can keep separate records- a person can have a marker in the family plot even if cremated and the remains are not there. We went through this last year with my 91 year old MIL who will have a marker in the family plot but was cremated and her remains are not there.</p>
<p>Thanks all!
hayden–which is why I posted. I do understand my sibs need for the true information at this gravesite. She tends to volatile and so I wanted to understand what would be authentic for the genealogy but also leave my father’s headstone intact and honor what was my mother’s intent before forming an opinion.
I guess I am trying to convey that it is better to talk with her with information to share and hoped that ideas generated here would help. Destroying the original headstone seems wrong. </p>
<p>Is it OK to put my mother date of death and then under “inernment Oakland, CA.”–?</p>
<p>If the stone is relocated then our father has none…so not a solution.</p>
<p>So–Thank you and exactly why I posted–what keeps the genealogy true for a family in this situation?</p>
<p>Also, my mother is a mausoleum with her first born in Oakland, Ca. so no gravesite.</p>
<p>Oregon, I guess I didn’t realize your father and mother’s headstone is the same stone. </p>
<p>I think your idea of putting both the death date and the actual internment site on the stone takes care of the problem. In fact, that’s an elegant solution, as it turn her part of the stone into a cenotaph, which is fairly common. When you go to Westminster Abbey, they make it very clear which monuments are for actual burial and which are memorials with no body. All genealogists ask for is historical accuracy that informs rather than misleads. Your solution is perfect.</p>
<p>With apologies to hayden, I think it is outlandish to think that it will be important to anyone in the future whether the remains of the person are buried in the site or not, unless the parents are very famous individuals. I suggest you explain to your sister that this particular stone is a memorial, not a grave marker, and just add the date of death.</p>
<p>Though it would not have occurred to me that any issues arise form just adding the date of death, by also adding the actual internment site takes care of the genealogical issue and gives validity to the sibling’s concerns. It’s often good to address such concerns for the sake of personal and family relations.</p>
<p>My father died in 1978. In 1997, my mother buried his ashes under a headstone with his name, birth year, death year, her name, birth year, and a death year of 2001. She was wrong and actually died in 2003. We did not correct the stone. Her ashes were scattered elsewhere. Clearly this is a genealogist’s nightmare, and we do not care. </p>
<p>In short, do whatever makes as many people as possible as happy as possible.</p>
<p>I do appreciate all of your opinions. This has been very helpful.
It would not be right to ignore my sister’s knowledge and desire to have the information be correct for future genealogist’s. I really love learning the word cenotaph and am wondering why she did not see that adding the Inurnment information as the best solution. (love learning that to).
So it would read “Inurned Oakland, CA”.
I so wish that the family had thought to take a few ashes and bury them there. Well, I did think of it but no one else wanted to and I try to stay out of things in general.
Not sure why this situation got my attention except that it just seemed there had to be a better solution.</p>
<p>“With apologies to Hayden, I think it is outlandish”? Really? That’s some apology there, Hunt. </p>
<p>There is certainly no law that says you have to do one thing or the other. I don’t have a clue who some of the “stars” of various reality shows are, but other people may think they’re famous and fascinating. To thousands of family descendants, finding and knowing about our ancesters is the equivalent of panning for gold and finding it. I would never say it’s outlandish to care about some reality star, so I think it’s each to his own, no? Furthermore, a genealogist thinks as much about the family that hasn’t yet been born as the ones who died 200 years ago. Gideon Macon, for instance, may be a nobody and who cares to you; but to genealogists he is an ancestor of George Washington. We treasure the past precisely because we treasure the future.</p>
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<p>Well, dmd, so far it’s one to one, since oregon is already trying to do exactly what you suggest: he/she is weighing his/her wishes against the expressed wishes of a sibling. I personally found it very nice that he/she asked whether the sibling’s wishes were typical, or just overly precise. It’s exactly that kind of sensitivity and care for others’ feelings that keep families together.</p>
<p>Was “outlandish” too strong a word? I confess I’m mystified why it could possibly matter where the actual ashes are, unless the grave in question is likely to be a pilgrimage site for people in the future–after all, the living family members will understand the actual situation. It’s not a matter of a false date, or anything of the sort. I don’t disagree with humoring the desires of the person who cares about it, though.</p>
<p>We just went through a lot of this, including the education about the terminology. My brother, my father and my mother all died (separately) at the end of 2011, beginning of 2013. They were all cremated when they died. This past summer we decided to inter my parent’s ashes in the grave they had bought when they lived in the town we grew up in although they hadn’t lived there for 30 years. They bought the grave to bury my grandparents when they died and bought the adjacent space for themselves. </p>
<p>We thought it might be nice to put all three urns in the grave but the cemetery would not allow that, only two. I admit we thought briefly about putting all the ashes in two urns but ultimately decided against it, for various reasons including that we’re not really rule-breakers and we didn’t think my dad and brother would have welcomed the idea of being together for all eternity since they could barely be in the same room for any length of time. The cemetery offered to sell us another grave in the new part of the cemetery for $1,800. My aunt knew of an empty grave on Long Island that another branch of the family wasn’t going to use. Neither of those sounded right so my brother is still riding around in the back of another brother’s car while we think of what to do with him. Maybe ski down a mountain with holes in the pockets of our ski pants so his ashes can drift out as we go. </p>
<p>And we discovered that my grandmother’s name was carved next to my grandfather’s on the joint headstone instead of under it so there’s no room for my parents’ names. So we either have to get a new headstone or buy a footstone. If we don’t, there’s only a computer spreadsheet somewhere that marks their grave.</p>
<p>uc–my mother misspelled my name on her headstone and had it changed. I will see it next week for the first time. Interesting. (and yeah–really, mom?)
I would thing that changing a 1 to a 3 might be possible. In my case they took a letter and made a E from an L and then blocked the extra letter.</p>
<p>UCBalum: the fact is that my family thinks the year error on my parent’s stone is funny. The other thing that’s funny about it is that the birth year is three years earlier than what’s on her passport, because she pretended to be younger all her life, right up until the stone was made.</p>