While I can sympathize with families who express their grief by leaving elaborate mementos at the grave sites, I think it can lead to distracting displays. Displays that, as the article states, decrease the solemnity of the cemetery. I could imagine that many of the people buried there might appreciate the cemetery's neat, spic-and-span military tidiness, and would want it to stay that way. I know I would if I were buried there. (I'm a veteran of the Gulf War, and was a neatnik long before I enlisted.)
"This is part of our grieving process," said Paula Davis, whose son Justin is buried there. "It might be generational. We personalize the graves. We don't just stand there and pray."
My response to that is: the graves are already personalized by name, dates of birth and death, and the place where the fallen had served. Putting up Christmas lights and little Jimmy Jr.'s first grade art projects seems a little out of keeping.
If that seems insensitive, consider what it would be like if the members of the Old Guard, the infantrymen intensively trained to guard the cemetery and conduct funeral services there were permitted to wear on duty mementos from girlfriends, lucky bandanas, rattly jewelry, a favorite pair of ragged jeans. All because "they mean so much to me."
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