That Stone's Gotta GO

  'Out Damned Child, Out!'

'Look here folks, this Cemetery is a 'Business' not a welfare office! While we certainly feel 'sad' about this ladys loss, We have particular rules here. I can identify with her situation in regards to losing her child, why just last week my little puppy got runned over by a mail truck. Well, I didn't run down to our graveyard and try and plant him in the Adult section, no, indeed not. I just put him in my backyard! You see the 'connection' here? This ladies child, bless his little soul, somehow slipped through the cemetery cracks and mistakenly got buried in the Adult section. Here we have an Adult section, a Child section, and an 'Other' section. We just don't allow children in the Adult section. Older, 'dead' folks like their peace and quiet, and we're just not gonna allow children, no matter how dead they might be, to bother our Adults by running all over the place, yelling and screaming like 'wildchilds'. There's gotta be a certain measure of respect, and decorum here! And Now this lady sneaks in this Star, this abomination of a 'headstone' and we're supposed to just sit back and take it? Now some of you might think that stone looks a little like a Jewish Star of David, well you can rest easy, That that never crossed our minds! And even if it Did, which it didn't, it probably wouldn't have mattered one bit. And That Teddy Bear!! The fact is, it just doesn't 'fit' in with the Christian 'ambiance' of our lovely litlle cemetery. I mean what Were they Thinking? A Star!? Hey we have a lot of 'styles' here but This has gone waaaay too far. Our 'customers' just don't like it at all. We even got a few complaints from some of our best clients! Now this lady, bless her, has a few options. The kid can stay where he's At, but he's gotta be quiet after 9pm, but that Stone has gotta Go, and we already took care of That. Orrrr, she can have her kid moved to the Childrens section, and the Stone can go There with him. But we're not gonna pay for it! Now you might wonder, Why in the world do we have Adult, Child sections in the first place. Hmmm..., well Somewhere in the Bible I'm pretty sure there's a rule that calls for That. We're just ahead of the curve on that one. But I already mentioned about how our older residents like their peace and quiet. That works for Us! You know, I'm really quite surprised that we've received So much Heat over this trivial, matter'.  :/ :/ :/

 

Cemetery removes child’s headstone, leaving grieving single mom heartbroken

By Howard Portnoy on June 15, 2015 at 10:48 am

“The only things that are certain in life,” Benjamin Franklin quipped, “are death and taxes.” A story out of Malvern, England, suggests that even death comes with its share of uncertainties.

Jo Corbett-Weeks and her dying son, Max (credit: family photo)

 

That is the sad lesson learned by Jo Corbett-Weeks, a single mother, who saved up $4,580 to buy a special headstone for her little son, Max, who had died at age 4.
“It would have been Max’s seventh birthday,” Corbett-Week told the BBC, emphasizing that “this was like a birthday present to him from me. I chose a star-shaped stone because I wanted something suitable for Max — something personal.”
The headstone, shown below, went up on Max’s grave on the third anniversary of his death. Three days later it was gone, removed by the “council chiefs” at Great Malvern Cemetery, who had received complaints. It seems that the stone was a violation of decorum in the adult section of the cemetery, where Corbett-Weeks had arranged for Max to be buried three years earlier so he could “be close to other family members.”

Credit: newstream

To add insult to injury, Corbett-Weeks was never informed of the decision to remove the stone. “I was totally unaware this was going on,” she explained, adding:

The council did not contact me and it was the stonemason who told me he’d been ordered to remove it. I feel upset, distressed and angry. We have been through so much as a family. I could understand if the grave was uncared for or unsightly, but it isn’t.

Corbett-Weeks is now fighting to get the monument restored. A spokesman for the council in the meantime had a statement for the BBC:

We have a conformity of shapes in our lawn cemetery. We were contacted by people who objected to the shape. The longer it stayed up, the harder the process would have been.
It was a very difficult decision to remove it but one we had to make straight away.

The spokesman went on to note that the council has “great sympathy” for Corbett-Weeks’s loss.
Yeah, you can tell.