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Community Corner

Oakmont Memorial Cemetery Travesty

I'm not sure this is something you'd want to cover or not, but I would like to somehow get the word out about this.  Brief background - I lost my 21 year old son a little over 10 years ago.  His resting place is Oakmont Memorial Cemetery in Lafayette, CA. and I go to visit him every single weekend.  The groundskeepers and the people at the reception desk know my car and they know my face.  For over 10 years, I have put items on his gravesite (nothing on the surrounding grass........just directly on the marker and the marble).  NOTHING was ever said to me, advising that it shouldn't be there.

Then today, I got to the cemetery and saw that EVERYTHING that had been on Joey's (my son) gravesite AND every other gravesite in the entire cemetery was gone. All that was left were the flowers. Everything I had put there and everything that my mom, my dad, and Joey's friends had put on there.............gone!! I went into the office, ready for a yelling match, and asked where all my stuff was. They had bagged everybody's things up and put them NEXT TO THE DUMPSTER, ready to throw out with the trash!!! That's what they think of other people's loved ones..........their keepsakes, their pictures, their memories. I am livid!!! Joey is buried in the Garden of Compassion section of the cemetery, believe it or not. I have had the same things on his site for almost 11 years. The very least they could have done was to contact me and tell me what they were going to do.  Even a note on his gravesite would have been okay, knowing that I haven't missed a weekend in 10 years!!!  I know that I am not alone in the feeling that this was just plain disrespectful and I would like others to know how heartless and uncaring this business is.  When you're in this line of work, dealing with people's grief, I think that compassion should be the number one priority.

Can you please help me?

Thank you in advance for whatever you can do to make the public aware of this travesty


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