My wife and I have been a ""customer"" of Crestlawn for nearly five years. Our daughter, who was tragically taken from us in 2005, is buried there. One thing that is very important to us is having the ability to decorate Lori's grave (flowers, small pinwheels, butterflies, etc). We do this tastefully and with total regard for surrounding gravesites as to not infringe upon their spaces. Today, upon arriving at Lori's gravesite for a visit, I found all of our decorations missing. I was shocked, and then as I looked around, I noticed that virtually all of the graves were stripped clean of their decorations. I went to the office to inquire as to where all the decorations could have gone. I was informed that Crestlawn had abruptly and without any notice to its customers decided to now enforce their rules on gravesite decorations, allowing absolutely nothing except fresh flowers in approved containers. This was done supposedly because of complaints by certain customers that people were getting out of hand with their decorations, staging barbeques at the cemetery, leaving beer bottles everywhere, end even firing .22 caliber guns there. I personally have not witnessed these occurrences, but if they indeed are occurring, the management of Crestlawn should not penalize those respectable customers who simply want to preserve the cherished memories of their loved ones with a few decorations but instead should go after the perpetrators of these incidents.
When asked where my things were, I was taken to a maintenance yard/trash area where dozens and dozens of piles of grave decorations had been dumped. This is outright desecration by the management of Crestlawn. The taking of personal items at a gravesite and dumping them like trash is simply wrong. They contend that the rules have always been there, just never enforced. It would have been nice if management had given their customers some advanced notice that decorations would no longer be allowed, rather than just trashing them like yesterday's garbage.
Crestlawn management is extremely insensitive to the needs of most of their customers. Instead, they choose to ban all forms of decorations rather than deal with a few individuals who are going beyond reasonable decoration. If I were asked to recommend Crestlawn as a place to bury a loved one, I would have to say ""no way"". People need to be treated in a more compassionate manner that what Crestlawn is showing.
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