I found an article about Decoration Day in the archives of historic St. Agnes Cemetery, Menands, that was published in an Albany newspaper in 1901. The article boasts of the cemetery's good form and describes it as being "in harmony with the natural topography of the surroundings in accordance with modern rural or landscape art, which always avoids vain and tawdry artificial production."
If "artificial productions" were deemed an affront to the harmony of nature, what would past generations have thought about the current practice of placing artificial flowers on graves? We tread on Mother Nature by inventing our own version of her in a significant way. I am referring specifically to the impact artificial decorations have on our environment. The waste they generate per cleanup in our Catholic cemeteries alone is in excess of 300 cubic yards — enough to fill two tractor-trailers.
We have three major cleanups per year. Are we justified in filling six huge trailers with things that will take decades to decompose?
Take time to ask yourself who you appease when you place false flowers on a grave. The dead cannot appreciate your gesture. Please consider leaving a lovely bunch of natural flowers on your loved one's graves. What they lack in durability of construction, they more than make up for in beauty and sentiment, and they decompose naturally, the way flowers should.
Kelly Grimaldi
Historian, Albany Diocesan Cemeteries, Menands