The celebration of a birthday or wedding anniversary for a loved one who has recently passed away is always a difficult time for the loved ones left behind. By marking this special occasion with a headstone decoration in the shape of an angel, you can place a special memento close to your loved one.

These wonderful aluminum headstone decorations are weather-proof and simply hook over the top of the headstone. One of our favorite products is the angel. The word angel is derived from the Greek word “angelos” which means “messenger”.

Some believe that angels carry messages from this world to the next for us. Whatever you believe, this beautiful decoration “sends your message of love” out to all who see it gracing the headstone of your dearly departed.

Each angel decoration is crafted using the process of sand casting; allowing for each piece to be unique. These unique decorations are available in our online store and will make a precious remembrance next time you visit the cemetery.

So let our little angel “messenger” watch over your loved one’s last resting place and be a testimony of your love and special day celebration.

Solar Cross

Softly glowing lighted sentinels that light the way to your loved one’s grave, illuminated grave markers provide gentle comfort to families. An increasingly popular way to pay tribute to our loved ones, solar light grave markers come in a variety of comforting choices including the lovely ethereal Solar Light Angel, the bright white Solar Light Cross, the Inspirational Solar Bible, the beautifully colored Memorial Flag, the popular Solar Light Yellow Ribbon and the very personal Solar Light Photograph Display that allows families to display a lighted picture of their loved one on top of the headstone. All illuminated grave markers are powered by discrete energy-efficient solar light panels that in no way distract from their beauty.

Light has been an important element of funeral rites and burial customs for centuries. Primitive tribes feared death and believed it was brought about by evil spirits. In many cultures, bodies were burned in funeral pyres to excise evil spirits from the dead and protect the living.

In other cultures, fire was believed to light the way to the next world. The spirits of their dead were believed to ascend to the next world on the smoke of funeral pyres. A vestige of those ancient customs can be found in the candle lighting practiced by many modern religions and cultures to honor the dead.

Grave Stone Cleaning Before & After

When families place a stone on the grave of a loved one, they want it to last for all time. The names and dates chiseled into stone serve as memorials to family members who have passed on and as markers for future generations to connect to their ancestral roots. It is by their grave stones that many people discover their ancestors and trace their family’s journey across America. The stone markers provide a certain solace and tangible connection to those who have gone before us.

Today, most grave stone markers are made of granite or marble, two particularly hard and long-lasting stones. In the past, pieces of wood or field stones were used to mark graves. Sometimes referred to as wolf stones, field stones were placed on graves to deter scavenging animals. Slate was a popular early grave marker, eventually giving way to the superior durability of granite and marble.

Over time rain, snow, pollution, hot summers and cold winters take a toll on even the hardest stone, including grave stones and monuments. Surfaces become black and dirty looking. Carved inscriptions become dulled by erosion and begin to fade. Without periodic cleaning and restoration, these lasting monuments will not last forever. The Gravesite Masters offers professional stone and monument cleaning and restoration services. We can return your loved one’s grave stone or your family’s monument marker to its original sharp, clear and beautiful condition.

Memorial Cairn

Flowers aren’t for everyone. The ancient Celts marked graves with cairns, stacks of rocks and stones of varying size from near boulders to small pebbles. Many cairns seen in Scotland, Wales and Ireland are conical but some are tall precarious towers of stacked rocks that seem to defy the laws of gravity. Over the centuries the building of cairns has been a time-honored way to memorialize the dead.

During the Bronze Age, large cairns containing burial cists, stone coffins, were built throughout the United Kingdom. Usually built on a hill above the deceased’s village, cairns served as both memorial and reminder of the deceased. A freeform tombstone marking an individual’s passing, the pile of stones may have served to discourage grave robbers or keep dead souls from escaping. In Scottish tradition, rocks were carried from the bottom of the hill to the cairn at the top, the cairn growing in size as each visitor added another rock to the pile.

It is tradition for each person passing by a cairn to add a stone. Stones must be added to the top of the cairn and be smaller than the stone upon which it is placed. Not only does the habit counteract the effects of weathering; but when the cairn marks a grave, adding a stone is considered a sign of respect. In keeping with cairn tradition, The Gravesite Masters can arrange to mark a loved one’s grave with a memorial rock or boulder, a timeless tribute and the beginning of a cairn to commemorate your loved one.

18" Gold Fancy Heart

Love doesn’t end when someone close to us dies. Love stays in our hearts where it is nurtured by our memories.

On Valentine’s Day it is as natural to remember and honor those who have enriched our lives but are no longer with us as it is to bring flowers and chocolates to the living.

After the death of a spouse, parent, child or close friend, remembering our departed loved ones on special holidays and on birthdays and anniversaries with a gravesite wreath or floral arrangement helps us to grieve and gradually assimilate their loss into our lives.

The Gravesite Masters offers a large selection of lovely Valentine’s Day wreaths to decorate the graves of loved ones who have passed away. Heart-shaped wreaths in a wide variety of colors and designs ensure that you’ll be able to find a fitting tribute for your departed loved one. Gravesite Masters also offers a large variety of popular gravesite stick hearts that can be easily stuck into the ground at the individual’s gravesite. Bouquet and vase combos are another popular Valentine’s Day gravesite decoration. Our velvety artificial rose bouquets are so real looking you’ll want to reach out and touch them.

Not only can you purchase gravesite memorial flowers from The Gravesite Masters, but we can arrange to deliver them to the cemetery and place them on the grave of your loved one, allowing you to remember loved ones across the country.

We all find it disturbing to visit a cemetery and see unattended graves. No one likes to imagine their final resting place will be lonely and abandoned. That’s why families will visit and place fresh flowers on graves. They also will make efforts to ensure that the grave and the surrounding area is well maintained.

However, with increasingly busy schedules we might find it difficult to regularly visit our loved one’s gravesite. This is especially true when the cemetery is located somewhere that is difficult to get to (this situation is exacerbated for senior citizens who have lost a spouse and find it hard to travel to the cemetery).

Fortunately, Grave Concerns makes tending the gravesite much easier to do. Even if you live across the country, you can use their services and products to beautify the deceased’s grave. For example, if you discover that your loved one’s tombstone is weather-worn or covered with moss, Grave Concerns can send an expert Gravesite Master Professional to restore and clean the tombstone.

Of course, simply placing fresh flowers or other beautifying ornaments by the grave is something that can easily be arranged with just a few clicks. With a vast array of unique and tasteful memorial products, you can rest assured that your loved one will be memorialized in the most respectful manner.

Solar Light Angel

More people die in January and February than at any other time during the year, according to statistics from the National Vital Statistics System; but you’ll rarely see the word “died” in their death notices. Obituaries are rarely cut-and-dried factual articles written by newspaper reporters; most are memorials created by the family of the deceased. Perhaps it’s a wish to soften the finality of death, perhaps it’s an effort to keep the inevitable at arm’s length, maybe it’s human denial; but when you read an obituary you’ll find that most people tend to distance themselves from death by using euphemisms for life’s final event.

“Death is hard to deal with,” Geoffrey Nunberg told McClatchy Newspapers. The University of California at Berkeley linguist said most people avoid the “D” word when describing death. “This is one reality that’s hard to face head-on.”

Our avoidance of death is nothing new. Euphemisms for death can be found in the Bible, Homer and Shakespeare. The phenomenon seems universal, cutting across centuries and cultures. “Passed away” is the phrase most favored in obituaries, although there are many others:

• “Crossed over”
• “Joined his wife”
• “Left us suddently”
• “Passed over to his reward”
• “Returned home”
• “Went to sleep peacefully”
• “Taken away from us”
• “Slipped away quietly”

Some psychologists believe it would be healthier for us to face death head on. They believe using “dead” and “died” to describe death helps people face the finality of death and grieve.

Grieving families can find it difficult to make informed decisions about funeral and gravesite arrangements for their departed loved one. Emotion clouds judgment. Distress makes it impossible for many people to let go of their grief long enough to make the many practical decisions that accompany the end of life. The shock of death and pressure to make funeral arrangements can be overwhelming. The result can be hastily made emotional decisions that ignore the family’s financial reality.

Some unscrupulous funeral homes take advantage of the family’s distress to sell them high-priced funeral products and services that they either don’t need or can ill afford. According to the National Funeral Directors Association, the average cost of a U.S. funeral was $7,323 in 2006, an increase of 45% since 2001, and prices are still climbing. The high cost of dying is causing many families to pick and choose services from respected online funeral product providers rather than purchase a funeral home’s comprehensive package.

Many families now choose online obituaries and Remembrance Registries instead of expensive newspaper obituaries prepared by funeral homes. Online memorials are available to friends and families across the country, not just local newspaper subscribers. Rather than purchase gravesite enhancements and floral holders or arrangements from cemeteries, people are seeking cost effective online resources. Many are purchasing their cemetery plots from owner Cemetery Registries.

The Gravesite Masters offers many affordable funeral products and services to help grieving families hold the line on funeral costs.

For those who never got their 10 minutes of fame while they were living, an Iowa funeral home has come up with a unique, if bizarre solution. The Des Moines funeral home will place your funeral announcement — with your photo, of course — on high-tech electronic billboards around the city. Family members can arrange to have a favorite picture of their departed loved one, along with details about their life and information about visitation and funeral services, posted larger-than-life in full color for the entire city to see.

The unusual billboard program is a first in the funeral industry, Jessica Koth, a spokeswoman for the National Funeral Directors Association in Brookfield, Wisconsin, told the Associated Press.  Billboard advertisements for funeral homes are common, but this is the first time Koth said she’s ever heard of someone putting information about the deceased or funeral service information on a billboard. The new program has caught some flak for lack of sensitivity, but the general manager of the Des Moines funeral home defends the practice, saying it’s just a modern take on newspaper obituaries.

Who knows whether the idea will catch on, but The Gravesite Masters believe family may be better comforted by online memorials and interactive life legacies and remembrance registries that allow family members to share their memories, thoughts and pictures about their departed loved one.

The Cemetery Registry

The beginning of a new year is a good time to review family documents and make sure your affairs are in order. Death catches most of us by surprise. A grieving spouse and family is in no emotional condition to make burial plans and important financial decisions should you die unexpectedly. It is always better to plan ahead, including for your funeral and final resting place. If you have not discussed your funeral and burial arrangements with your family, perhaps this is a good time to do so. When loved ones die, grieving family members find it extremely helpful to have a sense of what their departed loved one wanted.

Many families find it helpful to preplan funeral arrangements and burial services, even if they choose not to prepay them. Purchasing your grave site ahead of time takes care of an important end of life decison, removing that burden from your family. Purchasing a grave site from The Cemetery Registry allows you to choose the cemetery where you would like to be buried. The Cemetery Registry is a North American registry of verified, authenticated private owner grave sites, cemetery lots and cemetery plots offered for sale by the plot owners. People who have purchased or inherited cemetery lots they no longer plan to use, often due to a family move, may also sell their unwanted cemetery lots through The Cemetery Registry.

For more details about buying or selling cemetery plots and lots through The Cemetery Registry, please click here.