One month. And as a rule, Jewish graves (at least the ones we have here) don’t just have a headstone or a marker, but also a full-length slab placed on top of the entire grave.
I just leave a pebble, as per the custom of my people. I’ve placed pebbles on Jim Morrison’s and Elvis’s tombs.
Showing respect for the dead is a huge part of Jewish culture.
There’s a big historic cemetery near where I live, now maintained as a nature reserve and park (many cemeteries are run partly or wholly to encourage wildlife). They occasionally organise “Family Fun Days” in the cemetery
I think the idea that it’s poor taste is kinda weird. Graves with headstones are memorials after all - they are designed specifically for people to visit and remember them. And famous people, let’s face it, don’t want to be forgotten. I think visiting graveyards and reading the headstones of people who have passed, imagining the lives they lived, is actually a nice thing to do. Whether you know them or not.
Well, why would they know? It’s not their department.
One year in the US typically. I have no idea why it’s different.
Huh. I did not know that.
News to me too.
I have no interest in “celebrities” alive or otherwise but I feel otherwise about history. If I found myself in London Westminster Abbey would be worth going to see. On my short gravel road there’s a graveyard full of people who lived here, including a number who lived in the house I now inhabit. Dates from the 1700’s to the 2000’s. I go there and clean the stones from time to time. God’s acre is a fenced in hollow ground.
I do like the new ritual of women paying homage to Susan B.Anthony by sticking their ‘I voted’ decals on her grave in Rochester NY.
Your situation is far from intrusive or disrespectful.
Now, if it’s a group of teens who want to carouse and leave empty beer cans amongst the graves, that’s a different story. It all depends on who, why, and how. My brother would take me “night crawling” (alternate name for large earthworms) to get bait for fishing, and the cemetery provided a very large population of them. Trust me, we didn’t disturb anyone or touch anything grave related.
Cave Hill is a beautiful cemetery. I used to live about ten minutes from there, and it’s still within about half an hour from me. My grandparents are buried there.
At the voodoo priestess’s crypt in NOLA it was decided that the chalked Xs were potentially damaging. They were removed and now chalking an X will get you fined.
I assume the removal of the X I placed is the reason it did not work.
Margaret Fuller was an early women’s rights activist and journalist. She has a marker in Mt. Auburn Cemetery (not technically a grave, since her body was never found); when I was there, some people had left pencils on it.
When I lived in L.A. I frequently went to see live music at the Viper Room. It was impossible for me to walk through the door without thinking of River Phoenix, even briefly.
I used to pass by the spot Yitzhak Rabin was shot at least once a week. I’d always give the memorial a nod.
I read something on the web once from someone who hiked up Potosi Mountain, near Las Vegas, to the site where Carole Lombard was killed in a plane crash.
I was in the Detroit area a while ago. After I got home I discovered that I drove right by the restaurant where Jimmy Hoffa was last seen alive, but I didn’t know it at the time.
I think it’s fine as long as you demonstrate the same solemnity and respect as if it were your mother’s grave.
The problem is when you start to act like a tourist, take selfies in front of the headstone, yell out to your friend 50 yards away, “Hey, I found Jim Morrison!”
ISWYDT
When I was visiting Pere Lachaise, we and the other tourists were requested to leave because a funeral was about to take place.
When I visited St Louis Cemetery No 1, where Marie Laveau’s tomb is located, a funeral occurred, but we were welcomed to march along with the band. It was awesome. A real celebration of life.
There’s a ceremony a year later to signify the end of mourning, or something along those lines, correct? Maybe that’s what they were confusing it with.