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Cemetery visitors should watch out for falling stones

18/10/2006

FROM time to time I visit the family grave. Considering all the love and attention showered on me by grandparents, aunts and uncles it's the least I can do.

Despite pressure from encroaching development, the cemetery has been carefully maintained and provides an oasis of solace for grieving relatives.

Hitherto the garden of remembrance has remained thankfully free of vandalism, so imagine my shock when, on a recent visit, I discovered dozens of memorial stones pushed over. It looked like a hurricane had swept through devastating all in its path. It was a heartbreaking sight.

But this was no hurricane. Reluctant staff had been ordered to carry out this desecration in the name of 'health and safety'.

"It makes you sick in the stomach," one cemetery employee told me.

When I enquired how many visitors had actually been injured by falling gravestones, I was told there wasn't a single incident on record since the cemetery opened.

Have we all gone completely barking mad? Scores of precious family memorials tended with loving care for generations flattened overnight by order of the health and safety police.

Just imagine the heartbreak of elderly relatives when they discover the graves of their loved ones desecrated in this way. What reason are they going to be given?

"We flattened your husband's grave just in case it injured someone."

"Why, have you had a lot of accidents?"

"No, not a lot."

"How many?"

"None."

"None?"

"Well, not in the last 200 years, but you never know."

How long are we going to tolerate this insanity?

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