Why do you bother to bring flowers and light candles in the cemetery? Do you do it for the living or for the dead?

It's something I am wondering about.
I know it's become tradition, like a means to gather with family and respect the dead.

But the dead are dead. Inside the tombs, they're bones. Inside the urns, they're ashes.

I mean no disrespect. I just genuinely like to understand. Deep down, if there is no one who would see you do it or who would expect you to do it, would you still do it? And why?

Would you do it for the living? For yourself? For the dead? Why?

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

4meAndyou · F

Well, I never go to cemeteries, nor do I leave flowers or light candles, because the souls of those interred there have either already moved on, or they never will. IF I went to the grave of a family member...and I can't...2000 miles away or more for some of them...I think I would speak silently in my own mind, and just tell them that I miss them. Just in case their spirit was checking in that day. 😉

BUT my mother was huge into going to the cemetery and leaving flowers. Usually plastic flowers. AND after my father died, wisely requesting his burial be about 2000 miles away from where she lived, she was unable to litter his grave with plastic, so she created a little altar for him in her home. There was a SILK fake red rose on the little altar. I never heard her pray, or speak to the people who had gone before her.