Dancing for the dead.

This is not a family history research posting, but I had to share my Memorial Day photos somewhere, and this is that somewhere. My special Memorial Day mission was to find the old cemetery of the Congregation Shaarey Tzedek--mission not accomplished. In my search I nearly fell to my death down a steep hill covered with weeds, which would have been convenient, because the hill I was climbing was right behind a crematorium. Anyway, I think I need to try a different approach on a different day. My consolation prize was looking around the Salt Lake City Cemetery--already a fabulous cemetery, but extra wonderful on Memorial Day, full of rememberers.

The World War I veterans had been well taken care of with flags and flowers. As I passed by a lady was telling her companions about the tradition of veterans leaving coins on their fellow soldiers' graves. If they leave a penny it means something, a nickel means something else, a dime something else, and a quarter (the only one I remember) meant that that veteran leaving the quarter had been with that soldier when he died. Apparently the coins are gathered and used to help pay for veterans'  burials when needed.

There are clusters of East Asian graves throughout the Salt Lake City Cemetery, and the plots are always well taken care of. Frequently offerings of fruit, incense, and flowers are left, and many more on Memorial Day. Some of the headstones are shaped like little shrines, built to accommodate the burning incense.

Quite a few families were camping out in the areas of the cemetery dominated by gravestones with names that sounded Hispanic and Filipino. I've heard of All Saints Day being celebrated like that in some parts of the world, so I'm guessing these families came from those cultures. I don't know if they do anything in particular--tell stories about the dead? Or is it just a big family reunion? One family had brought big speakers and hooked them up with a long cord to their car stereo, which was blasting a mix of rock music and LDS Primary songs.  :)

One family had done something really unique--they had put up lots laminated photos of the couple buried here--on the front side were photos of them growing up and copies of their obituaries, and on the back side were photos of them together, with their children, and in their later years, including their joint testimony of the Book of Mormon.

I also liked this, from that same gravesite--the family had posted a laminated map of the Salt Lake Cemetery with the graves of others of their family members who were buried there marked in yellow--so that once you found this grave, you could easily find the others. It's a huge cemetery (the largest city-operated cemetery in the country), so that would be really handy for those who want to do right by their dead people but don't want to wander all day searching for other grave locations. There was also an email address you could write to if you wanted copies of the photos posted at the grave. Cool family.

And how did my family honor our dead? Interpretive ribbon dance in the Union Fort Pioneer Cemetery, of course.