One of my brother lives across from the cemetery where my parents are buried. He visits regularly. My sister does as well.

I don't visit the cemetery. My folks are with me all the time. "Every step I take, Every move I make..." is influenced by their love and how they brought me up.

Yes but I don't participate. One of my brothers does. One reason I don't is because I live too far and the other is I just don't like going. My parents are with me always so I don't feel the need to go. I know they wouldn't care either.

As children, my grandfather took us to the cemetery quit regularly, we brought stale bread for the geese (no longer encouraged to feed). He would care for the graves and showed us where are great grandparents and other relatives were buried. After he passed, I would regularly take my mother and her dog up to visit the cemetery and to care for the flower baskets. Now my sister and her husband are the main caretakers of the grave sites, but I help plant the baskets and tend them during the summer. I will be cremated but my ashes will be put in my spot next to my grandparents. I am trying to pre-order my stone, but because of covid there is a big backlog, and I haven't been able to although I am on the list for the proof. They say granite is in short supply and the stone maker is backed up even with more people being cremated and ashes scattered in other places.

My family cemeteries are 40 miles away. I leave flowers early in the week of Memorial Day & pick them up before June 15. The man who mows one cemetery told me the cemetery doesn’t get flowers compared to when he started 18 years ago. I make my own pots with plastic flowers & a few inches of cement in the bottom. In 4-5 years they get replaced with new as they don’t look so good anymore. We also “tidy up” a few extended family graves with a weed whip & spray but don’t decorate. Anytime I’m in the area, I stop at my parents grave. Their graves are just inside the fence so it’s easy to do.

I guess you could say I do my part for other people by cleaning stones in the cemeteries in town (with the blessing of the cemetery commission). Even just scraping loose lichen off the stones makes a big difference.
I take photos for the FIndAGrave website and quite often I need to clean the stone just to be able to read the names and dates.

I agree. I once asked my Aunt ( very active in her faith) if she visited her late husbands’ grave. She had the same response as yours. I was surprised, at first, but I loved her response too. No “guilt”, no regret. I love the photos and memories of them both.

I do when I can. My parents and older siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents are 3 hrs away. My sister looks after them along with some of my cousins. All of our cremated are in what we call "a hole in the wall" at the cemetery ( a marble wall with sealed alcoves for urns). I can remember going to the cemetery as a young child with my mom and her sisters. I learned a lot of family history there and it helped me understand dying and death. My adult kids go to their Dad's grave and take their kids with them. The grandkids ask a lot of questions about Grandpa when we're there. They also help me with upkeep. I do feel like my deceased family members appreciate our respect for their physical burial spot. I hope I mean enough to my family that they will want to honor me in that way after I'm gone.

My mom was adamant about cleaning / decorating graves every year. My dad went along with it but didn't care for it . I'm like my dad- I don't visit, I don't decoate.

This was something that was very big in my father's family, but now we live too far away to do it. My mother's grave is a long distance from us, also. But our daughter's grave is just 4 miles from our house, so we go there regularly and put out flowers every year and change out the decorations as the seasons change. We put out a concrete dog on her stone (she loved dogs) during the spring/summer time, a ceramic pumpkin in the fall, a wreath at Christmas, and smaller outdoor decorations as we com across them. She dropped dead at age 23, so it's been difficult to let go.

Leslie

not something we do, but it's a good idea. I'd certainly like to visit more often.