Now more than ever, people are working to bring Christmas cheer into Greeley cemeteries: 'Decorating and making her grave look beautiful is something that would make her happy'
As Christmas draws near, Greeley families decorate graves to remember loved ones. Photo by Dan England.
By Dan England
Jorge Hernandez would surprise Cheara Rivera with flowers at least once a week while they dated. It seemed only natural to make her a bouquet for Christmas. He lay the bouquet next to her headstone at Sunset Memorial Gardens to go with the tinsel that outlines her grave placed by her father, Loren Rivera. Cheara and her family, including her mother, Kerry Luna, love the Dallas Cowboys, so there’s a sign in a nearby tree, surrounded by some oversized balls hanging from the bare branches.
The bouquet is the third he’s made for her since she died on July 30 this year. She was 28. He figured out how to make them after a real bouquet they got for her funeral went bad. Hernandez took the heart-shaped bouquet, cleaned up the old flowers and added craft flowers to it.
“Decorating and making her grave look beautiful is something that would make her happy,” Hernandez said. “It keeps her spirit alive with us.”
The gravesite stands out at Sunset, but only a touch, as most of them are decorated for the holidays by their loved ones this time of year, just like the graves at the city’s Linn Grove Cemetery, both in Greeley. By day, you can see poinsettias, giant candy canes and silver, red and gold tinsel. By night, there are enough lights to outdo several neighborhoods, many of them powered by solar energy or batteries. During a heavy windstorm, a few guard their family graves, or they come and do a drive-by to ensure the breeze didn’t tear the display apart.
Solar power and battery power have allowed folks to go all out for the holidays. Photo by Dan England.
The holidays are always a time to decorate gravesites, and a few holidays are even more popular than Christmas, such as Memorial Day, when thousands of flags wave in the spring breeze. But advancements in Christmas decor and lights, including solar power, have made it possible to spruce them up for the holidays even more than the past few years, especially at night, now that they don’t need constant power to create an elaborate light display.
Cemeteries don’t allow displays that need to be powered by electricity, but the sun is another matter. Winter is also a good time for decorations, as they won’t interfere with yard work. In the summer, decorations are limited to things you can keep in a vase.
“We are less restrictive and have more exceptions through the holiday season due to the seasonal turf maintenance being less,” said David Naill, manager of Linn Grove. “I might mention that we constantly comb through the grounds and pick up spent and weathered decorations.”
Trey Edge, general manager of Stoddard Funeral Home, which owns and operates Sunset Memorial Gardens, off U.S. 34 and 35th Avenue, was pleasantly surprised to see the decorations after working in Dallas. He came to Greeley in March.
“I can honestly say through the year, this rural demographic is much more active as a whole for both visiting and decorating gravesites more consistently,” Edge said. “It’s really big here.”
Edge believes the small town culture is probably the reason for it.
‘“You have lifelong families here,” he said. “Grandparents are here, parents and there’s longevity.”
There aren’t many regulations limiting people from decorating graves, other than keeping them confined to their own space, and the cemetery can’t care for the decorations if they are torn apart by bad weather, although if the cemetery picks up damaged items, you can claim them back.
“You’d be surprised at how creative people can get to ensure their decorations stay in the ground,” Edge said.
Most of the rules are common sense, and it’s rare when Edge or Linn Grove needs to tell family members to change a display.
“You probably don’t want to have a 7-foot blow-up snowman at a grave,” Edge said. “I have seen that before.”