What a Cemetery Job Taught Me About Honoring the Dead

By Crystal Virgin

"We don't just remember the dead because it feels right. We remember them because they are still ours."

Growing up, I smelled like sunscreen and fresh-cut grass for the entire month of May.

My dad, my brother, and I worked the local cemetery every summer leading up to Memorial Day. Mowing, watering, weed whipping, repeat. It was unglamorous work — the kind where you're out in the heat before most people are awake, working through a grid of headstones that seemed to stretch in every direction. By the time the holiday weekend arrived, we knew that cemetery the way you know a place you've loved for a long time. Every path. Every corner. Every name.

The two or three days before were the most detail-oriented. Everything had to be right. And then the weekend itself — we'd walk the grounds placing small American flags at the graves of veterans. Hundreds of them. You'd read the names as you went. Some graves were old enough that the dates were hard to make out. Others were painfully recent. Each flag felt like a small act of acknowledgment: you served, you sacrificed, you are not forgotten.

People would arrive to decorate their family members' graves. We'd help them — pointing out locations, helping clean a headstone, carrying supplies. There was something quietly sacred about those interactions. Strangers, brought together by grief and love and the particular tenderness that comes with tending a grave.

Then Memorial Day came. And we rested. We went back to that same cemetery — not as workers, but as a family. As patrons. To visit our own.

A Candy Bar and Seven Boys

My grandfather on my dad's side passed away before I was born, so I never knew him personally. But I know him through stories — and one story in particular has stayed with our family for decades.

One day, he came home with a bag full of Hershey's chocolate bars. He handed one to each of his seven boys, watched them eat, and then looked around and said — that was good. Who wants another one?

It's a small moment. But it said everything about who he was.

Every Memorial Day, our family would gather at that same cemetery we spent all May caring for, stand around my grandfather's grave, and eat a chocolate bar together. My dad would share stories. Sometimes we'd just laugh. Sometimes we wouldn't say much at all. But we'd be together, and we'd remember him — not just as a name on a headstone, but as a man who once made seven boys feel like the luckiest kids alive with nothing more than a candy bar and a smile.

Remembrance Is Sacred Work

I didn't have the language for it then, but I understand now what those Memorial Days were teaching me.

Tending to the dead is holy work. In our faith, we believe that the connection between the living and those who have passed isn't severed — it's simply stretched across a veil we can't see through yet. The ordinances performed in temples, the family history research done late at night, the stories told around a graveside — all of it is part of the same sacred thread.

President Russell M. Nelson has taught that the family is the most important unit in time and in eternity. Memorial Day, at its best, is a living expression of that belief. We don't just remember the dead because it feels right. We remember them because they are still ours.

It's Not Too Late to Honor It

Memorial Day weekend may be behind us, but the spirit of it doesn't have to be. Remembrance doesn't have an expiration date. A few simple things, even now, go a long way:

• Tell a story this week. Gather your family at dinner and share a memory of someone who is gone. Let your kids ask questions. Let the stories get a little messy and real.

• Visit a grave. It doesn't have to be a family member. Any quiet walk among headstones has a way of softening the heart and sharpening perspective.

• Do a little family history. Even thirty minutes on FamilySearch can surface a name that deserves to be remembered — and maybe temple work that's waiting to be done.

• Bring something tangible into your home. The things we see every day shape what we think about. A temple on the shelf, a photo of an ancestor, something that quietly says we remember — these small objects carry more weight than we give them credit for.

They Are Still Ours

My grandfather never met me. But I've eaten a lot of chocolate bars in his honor over the years, and I feel like I know him anyway.

That's the gift of remembrance. It keeps people present even after they're gone. It passes stories from one generation to the next. And for those of us who believe in eternal families, it's more than sentiment — it's a quiet act of faith that the people we love are not lost, only ahead of us.

This Memorial Day, remember well. Tend to the names you know. Tell the stories that deserve to be told.

And maybe eat a candy bar while you're at it.