After funerals at funeral homes in Ferndale, WA, the funeral procession will take the deceased loved one to their final resting place, which will be in a cemetery. For many years, cemeteries were created by churches or by families, using land they already owned. As the population of the United States grew and people became more mobile, municipal, religious, and veterans cemeteries began to be developed.

Most cemeteries, whether they are family and church cemeteries, or municipal, religious, and veterans cemeteries, offer the same basic services. If they have a chapel, a service can be held there instead of at the site of the grave. They open and close the grave. And, they install the grave marker (some monument companies do their own gravestone placement).

Your funeral director will work directly with the cemetery you choose to be buried in to coordinate the funeral arrangements so that everything goes smoothly during the funeral process.

One of the key features of most cemeteries is the presence of nature. Whether it’s in the form of lush green grass or flowering bushes and trees, cemeteries are designed to be visited. Most municipal cemeteries were specifically designed to be gathering places. In the early 20th century, in big cities, where gorgeous cemeteries with walkways and wide open spaces were built, it was not unusual for people to go to cemeteries on Sunday afternoons for picnics or for a long stroll.

Most cemeteries also have decorative features or structures that are meant to be seen and admired. The can include monuments, water fountains, and statues. If you’ve never walked through a cemetery row by row, it can be a very enlightening experience as you see history in the gravestones and you think of the people who are buried there and what kind of lives they had, if they were old when they died, or what took their lives if they were young when they died. Sprinkled in between these graves, you’ll see the graves of soldiers who died fighting for the United States.

All large cemeteries have roads built in them so that vehicles can travel directly to the grave they are there to visit, without having to park a long distance away and walk all the way there. Some cemeteries are built on sloping land, so not only would you have a long way to walk, but you’d have some hill-climbing on the way to the grave and on the way back to your vehicle.

Some cemeteries are named memorial parks. In the tradition begun in big cities during the late 1800’s, when cemeteries were designed to be like a public park, smaller towns and cities built memorial parks. They are cemeteries, but they have lots of flowers, bushes, trees, and pathways. Many of them also have benches installed where people can just come and sit and enjoy the view. Memorial parks don’t allow any upright monuments to be installed at gravesites, because they would obstruct the beauty of the cemetery. Only graves stones that are flush with the ground (flat) are allowed.

Traditional cemeteries have both upright and flush gravestones, which makes them easily recognizable to be cemeteries. Some traditional cemeteries have wrought iron gates around them that are open only from sunrise to sunset, while other traditional cemeteries can be visited 24 hours a day.

For additional information about cemeteries at funeral homes, our compassionate and experienced team at Moles Farewell Tributes & Crematory – Greenacres Memorial Park is here to help. We also serve the areas of Bellingham, Ferndale and Mount Vernon, WA. You can visit our funeral home at 5700 Northwest Dr., Ferndale, WA 98248, or you can call us today at (360) 384-3401.