“Dear friend,
My fondness for green grasses and vibrant florals began in my early childhood. My mother would take me with her on her cemetery walks, bringing my attention to those charming blue and yellow flowers affectionately referred to as Forget-Me-Not Gravesite Care. Our pockets were filled with garden gloves, notepads, and little American flags. My mother, a photographer, had a camera in tow, always ready for that perfect shot. Our move to Washington DC nurtured my appreciation for monuments, historical structures, and national history. We were an army family and at our core was patriotism. Before long, I had developed a passion for the footprints of our past with a fervent desire to preserve them for our future generations.
Then a time came in my life when I stayed far away from a cemetery. I spent most of those days counting my losses, not my blessings. I fed misery, not passion, and found the cemetery had become a place of sorrow, despair, and faith-testing. This point became pivotal. During my worst personal suffering, the decision to believe in God again was one I have never regretted. I went back to the cemetery and lay my heavy heart down where He met me. I thanked God for his work in me, picked up my garden bucket with purpose, and in time He turned my agony of the grave into a beautiful garden of prayer! Birthed from my own tribulations and inspired by the passage that follows, Forget-Me-Not Gravesite Care became a mission from my heart to yours!
“Praise be to the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we may comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we receive from God.”
May we all become a planting of the Lord’s for the display of the splendor!
Blessings from a Forget-Me-Not Gravesite Care,
Amy.”
From gravestone cleaning to personal garden plantings, Forget-Me-Not Gravesite Care is here for a variety of needs. With that said, perpetual care or cemetery maintenance differs from a personal service provider in that your loved one’s headstone, marker, or memorial is not maintained by most cemeteries directly. The flowers are not refreshed & urns are not cleaned. Bouquets are not delivered to your loved one’s site if you move out of town. In your absence, the cemetery crew will not be removing decay & debris, nor will they pull weeds and freshen things up. This is the responsibility of the family.
Perpetual care trusts provide maintenance funding for most of the resplendent cemeteries in our area! Fresh green grasses and flowering trees are intended not only for harmonious visual effect but also for accentuating the legacy monuments themselves. Too often, the memorial structures within our cemeteries are silently decaying and will soon become unsightly. This will negatively impact the value potential of your cemetery grounds. When the integrity of a stone becomes compromised, the deterioration will inevitably begin to reflect poorly on the entire cemetery. All those green grasses and lovely plantings will not be able to mask an aging cemetery that has overlooked cyclic preservation maintenance.
You might ask why it is important to have my loved one’s gravestone cleaned. After all, it is new. Shouldn’t the rain just wash off the dirt? Many variables can compromise not only the visual appeal but also the physical integrity of a monument.
When planning to clean a cemetery monument, it is important to consider the matter that is causing the soiling or damage. The reason is that the approach used to rectify one issue may differ from another. For example, what will be used to remove graffiti will differ from what is used to remove biological matter. Further, the type and condition of the stone will be taken into consideration. Is the monument straight? Are there chips or cracks? Is it flaking apart? What are the status of the foundation and joint seals?
The following is a list of common factors affecting the lifetime of a monument, further threatening the preservation of its legacy.
Perpetual care trusts are set aside for grounds maintenance, roadways, and other incidentals and are not specific for preserving individual monuments. The good news is that my service is available within your community to assist everyone! That includes churches, churchyards, cemetery associations, and private families that share this concern. Forget-Me-Not Gravesite Care Gravesite Care is a monument cleaning and service provider that caters to individual family gravestones, but I am also dedicated to the entire cemetery community, to whom we collectively are called.
