Mother’s day was commercialized a few short years after its creation, but it was created as a commerce-free holiday:
Mother’s Day in the United States
the effort to create Father’s Day kind of took place in parallel and with similar altruistic motives, but it didn’t really pick up steam until commercial interests got involved. Even then, it was decades before it was officially recognized at a national level.
I don’t live close enough to any of my family’s gravesites to make a visit at any time. But I always order flowers for the graves on my mom and dad’s birthdays, and on Memorial Day for mom, dad, and both sets of grandparents. I’ve never done so for Mothers or Fathers Days.
Both sets of grandparents were immigrants, so there were no gravesite visits when I was growing up.
Growing up, it was very common in my family. My mother, grandmother (who lived with us) and us kids would schlep out to the cemetery maybe twice a year, once was always for Mother’s Day, to visit and plant flowers and clean the stones - my grandmother’s sisters, daughter and husband were all buried there. Once my grandmother died, the “tradition” stopped I suppose (I don’t really know - it was at that time in my life that I moved out of the house and was somewhat estranged from my family).
Now, my mom visits my dad’s grave (I believe) once or twice a year (she doesn’t go see her old relatives that we used to visit - they’re all in Illinois - my mom is in Arizona now) but I’ve never straight out asked her.
I don’t go and neither does my brother.
I do have some friends, however, who are a few years younger than me that do this twice a year as well. I don’t know if it’s a religious thing or not - I have never asked.
We cremate, so definitely not. And the idea of cremation is so ingrained in my head I honestly find graveyards creepy and terrible. I really don’t comprehend why it’s considered better to bury your loved one so the worms can get to them, take up a whole bunch of prime real estate, just so you can visit a headstone that probably put your family back a whole lot.
Now trust me, I don’t say anything to people IRL but at least I can say it here.
When I was still a kid, we lived in the suburbs but the grandparents lived in the city, and the cemetery wasn’t too terribly far from where they lived. We would take flowers to various graves on Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and Easter, and I think Thanksgiving, but I don’t recall going on anyone’s birthdays. One grandfather died when I was 11, but before that, we’d go to the graves of my mom’s grandparents and miscellaneous and aunts uncles who I’d never known. Shortly after my paternal grandmother died, I left home, and I’ve only been back to the cemetery for funerals - at least 5 that I can recall offhand.
We drive past the general area en route to visit my still-living mother, but we’ve never stopped. I figure the next time I’ll be there will be when Mom’s ashes are put in Dad’s grave.
One thing that always struck me as bizarre was the display of “flowers” (for want of a better word) that were on sale just outside the cemetary gates. You could get foam letter bearing colorful fake flowers spelling out **MOM **or DAD, foam crosses also crammed with artificial blooms, and (tackiest of all) a giant foam beer mug shape with yellow and white flowers to complete the effect. Even as a kid, I recognized the tacky factor.
Nope. I’ve never been into visiting the family graves. My mother decorated the graves on Memorial Day - cleaned them up and put flowers on. I only participated when I was young enough to be dragged along. Never anything for Mother’s Day, etc. As an adult, I don’t see the point. They aren’t in the grave. And if they were, I wouldn’t want to see them! I do remember my parents often - my mother’s dishes are in a central, visible part of my kitchen, etc. But I don’t need to go to a grave to remember.
Interesting on the original GQ part, on if others do it.
On the IMHO, I’m in a pickle: the visit is set up, my Father and his new “companion” (a wonderful woman and happy-making addition to the family) are going, as are other immediate family people who view her with suspicion, and she herself is undoubtedly a little…concerned…as she just wants to keep Dad and us happy,
…plus, I think my Father, in his new situation over 70 years in America, wants to get the thing done “right”; and he himself has been nothing but mordant and cynical about his own grave/observance (“you can piss on my grave”). But then again, he’s never had a wife die, and his parents were smoked in Auschwitz, so a grave of a loved one is undoubtedly a bigger deal than he always let on.
So me sticking to my guns (I’m in the “see you, Mom, on Yahrzeit, maybe, and certainly not regularly”) is now all fucked up as an announcement or action.
In fact I always thought, and told her so, that Mother’s Day–the celebration and remembrance–by rights should be on my birthday, or my brother’s.
I remember once going on a visit to a gravesite of some cousin or something. An Ashkenazi group asked me to come over to be the 10th man so they could have a minyan (quorum) to recite the Kaddish. No wailing and tearing of flesh; done and done. But what struck me was what I found out were Sephardic families here and there on the grass, having little pleasant things to eat and seeming to be quite relaxed.
Huh.
I visit my father’s grave whenever I visit my mother.
We visit my wife’s parent graves a few times a year. Also present are her grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great…you get the idea. Small country cemetery.
My mom, dad, and brother were all cremated, all scattered over a lake that has been a family gathering place for a few generations.
Since my Mom always said she would be offended if I did anything for her on Mother’s Day, I have to assume she’d be some pissed if I visited her grave then. 
But I could certainly see how it could be a “thing” for folks who celebrate M/D.
I work at a very large cemetery in California, and it is a HUGE thing around here, with the traffic jam to go with it. I lucked out this year and have the day off, or it would mean leaving at least 45 minutes early just to claw my way to the employee gate.
It’s the biggest day of the year, rivaled only by Ching Ming in early April.
Maybe I misunderstood. You’d rather NOT go to your mother’s grave because of all the sad emotions, but your wife is forcing you to?
I’d say there are better ways to remember Mom, if you don’t want to visit her grave.
Put me in the “why would I visit a grave no matter what day it is” camp. Obviously, I have asked to NOT be buried.
Especially for a recently deceased mother, this kind of thing makes a lot of sense to me.
After my mother died, the family went out on Mother’s day to throw a flower each into the ocean where her ashes were spread. (Well… where my grandparents said they spread them. We found out later, the ashes are in a sort of New-Agey seance shrine, but you can imagine that this is a vey long story.)
I think we did this for about the first three or four years only, though.
My in-laws do this on Memorial Day.
When my wife died in September more than ten years ago, I envisioned taking our three kids to her gravesite on Mother’s Day. We visited the first year, bought flowers for them to put on her grave (they were 13, 9, and 7 then), and…they did not enjoy it or find it comforting or feel any connection. They never asked to visit the gravesite, then or in future years.
YMMV.
I visited her gravesite a couple of times a year for a few years, and then one year I realized I had missed our anniversary. I mentioned this to someone, and they pointed out to me that when I went, I needed to go for myself, and when I started to forget those anniversaries, it meant that I no longer needed to go.
We are visiting my MIL’s gravesite tomorrow and taking flowers. This will be our second year. She was a wonderful, warm lady who eventually succumbed to Alzheimer’s.
My mother is dead as well, but she was cremated and her ashes spread at a beach in Venice, FL. I try to remember the (admittedly few) nice things about her on Mother’s Day.
In addition, I visit my grandparent’s graves every Christmas Eve and put flowers on their graves. They were married in 1915 on Christmas Eve, and to this day, I think that’s the most romantic thing ever.
As one who drives by a cemetery frequently, it seems people fall into two classes:
-one, where they visit the graves regularly, and decorate for holidays, halloween, etc. Flowers, tinsil, pumpkins, all kinds of stuffed animals, etc.
-Two, people who never go-you see stones surrounded by weeds, covered in moss. Obviously, very few visits here.
My husband goes once a year, on Mother’s Day, so he doesn’t fall into either of these categories. He did so again this morning. Got up at 5am, headed to the grocery store to buy some flowers, drove the half hour to the cemetery, then hopped the fence in time to spend sunrise in the company of his mom’s ghost.
My grandmother used to take me to my mother’s grave on Mother’s Day. My mother died when I was 5 years old and I used to dread Mother’s Day. I have not kept up the tradition.