Chicago Sun Times Editorial: Not visited, but not forgotten

Chicago Sun Times Editorial: Not visited, but not forgotten
Copyright by The Chicago Sun Times
July 15, 2009
http://www.suntimes.com/news/commentary/1666191,CST-EDT-edit15.article


Perhaps the greatest crime committed by the scoundrels at Burr Oak Cemetery was in making the assumption that no one would care.

In picking which graves to defile, the four workers charged with desecrating the historic cemetery sought out older graves that hadn't been visited recently, Cook County authorities said.

The assumption, of course, was that no one would notice -- that these dead were long forgotten.

The story of Christine Bray tells us otherwise.

Bray, who Sun-Times reporter Kara Spak profiled last week, didn't like going to Burr Oak, where she had buried her 10-year-old son Irving in 1996.

After Irving's death, Bray preferred to remember him as he was -- a sweetly mischievous kid who loved to dance.

But Bray, like hundreds of other anguished family members, many of whom also had stayed away from the cemetery, was forced last week to return to Burr Oak.

"This is heartbreaking," Bray told the Sun-Times as she tried unsuccessfully to get into the cemetery to find her son's grave. "I chose to pull the plug on him," she said of her son, who suffered from Down syndrome and a heart defect. "This is worse."

For people who have suffered a tragic loss, a grave visit can be too painful. For others, it is not how they want to recall a loved one. They prefer sharing stories, visiting a place that person loved.

Hundreds of bodies at Burr Oak were dug up and discarded, tossed aside under the assumption no one would care. But when the evils at Burr Oak surfaced, hundreds of relatives flooded the cemetery gates. Thousands more called or e-mailed, desperately seeking information.

Equating an unvisited grave with a forgotten life may be among the least obvious crimes at Burr Oaks.

It may also be the crime that cuts deepest.