Death Ends a Life, Not a Relationship: Objects as Media on Children's Graves

Adult’s graves are often considered places of rest, or, perhaps more precisely, places where the bodily remains are laid to rest. Traditionally, this is often explicitly expressed on the tombstone referring to the grave as ‘your final resting place’. However, quotes pointing to the grave as a final resting place are hard to find on children’s graves: there are no gravestones saying ‘rest in peace’. Instead, we find inscriptions such as ‘sweet dreams’ – indicating that the grave is not a monument, it is a place where the dead child can be accessed. Inscriptions like ‘you will always be our little angel’, ¹ ‘you filled us with smiles and happiness and the fire in your life’s light will always burn inside us’, ² ‘small feet also leave footprints’, ³ and ‘you gave us a day that lasts forever’ ⁴ are all very explicit examples of children’s graves being places for maintaining and building relationships that may have lasted very briefly in life.