Richmond, Virginia

Cemetery Visitors:  It looks like this couple is practicing for their final exits. They couldn't find a finer cemetery: more worth visiting than most art or history museums. Even presidents are buried here. Hollywood Cemetery. [2012]

Las Vegas, Nevada

Cemetery Visitors:  He has turned the graveyard into a park, and has come equipped with an umbrella. In this context, though, we should really call it a parasol since it is meant to protect against (para) the sun (sol). However, it really doesn't seem like it is doing him much good. Palm Downtown Cemetery. [2016]

Cathedral City, California

Cemetery Visitors:  Your assignment is to write an essay on "Cemeteries as Recreational Space." Don't forget to mention family recreation, which seems to be what's going on here. These folks will spend the day enjoying each other's company, while honoring the ancestors. To the park they have come: equipped for more than a short visit. Desert Memorial Park. [2017]

Palm Harbor, Florida

Cemetery Visitors:  These women are learning that not many options exist for floral displays when the departed has chosen a mausoleum as the final resting place. Conformity reigns supreme just as it did in the lawn cemeteries of the 1960s. Curlow Hills Memory Garden. [2014]

Concord, New Hampshire

Cemetery Visitors:  Some people come to the cemetery not to visit long-gone relatives, but to make gravestone rubbings. It is an attempt to preserve and disseminate the past. Better check before you rub, though. In some cemeteries, you must have a permit. South Burial Ground. [1976]

Steinbach, Manitoba

Cemetery Visitors:  All three of the folks pictured here date back to the original settlement of Steinbach by German-speaking Mennonites from Ukraine, which was then a part of the Russian Empire. The name on the headstone is one of the most common Plautdietsch names in these parts. Heritage Cemetery.[2012]

Destin, Florida

Cemetery Visitors:  He walks here regularly. It gives him exercise, but it also gives him the opportunity to be close to his parents. Just guessing, but his mom and dad (born in the '30s) look like they could have been 'come-heres,' and he looks like he might be a 'born-here.' Destin Memorial Cemetery. [2017]

Crossville, Tennessee

Cemetery Visitors:  She has come again to tend the graves of her parents. Not sure about "again." but her deportment seems so practiced. Not sure about "parents," but the chronology on the headstones fits. If they are her parents, the year 2007 must have been a low point in her life: Both died that year, and within a few months of each other. Coincidentally, they were also born within a few months of each other. Crossville City Cemetery. [2019]

Thurmont, Maryland, USA

Cemetery Visitors:  He comes here regularly to visit the grave of his grandparents. Here lies his grandmother. Perhaps she had a flower garden at home, so her survivors wanted her to have one at her final resting place as well. Wellers Cemetery. [2013]

Prattville, Alabama

Cemetery Visitors:  He is visiting his wife, and soon he may well join her in their final resting place. Do you think she knows he is there? Memory Gardens. [2013]

London, Ontario

Cemetery Visitors:  A visitor to the cemetery might wipe down the headstones of family members, but they might also tend to the flowers that are planted on the grave's topside. St. Peter's Cemetery. [2013]

Winter Garden, Florida

Cemetery Visitors:  Cemeteries are for the living as well as the dead. Many who visit are there to take care of a family member's final resting place. Whenever you see flowers on a grave, you know that somebody still cares. Here, not only do you see flowers, you also see a survivor wiping down a loved one's headstone. Winter Garden Cemetery. [2018]