Flowers for a Child's Grave: Gentle Choices and Keeping the Dates

The graves of children are the most tended graves in any cemetery. Parents visit for decades. Birthdays are kept, holidays are decorated, and the small section where infants are buried is often the most colorful part of the grounds. If you are a parent, this guide is for the practical side. If you are a friend or relative, it is for knowing what helps.

What parents place

• Soft colors and small flowers. Pastel pinks, blues, lavenders and whites; baby's breath, small roses, daisies, forget-me-nots. Arrangements for a child's grave are usually smaller and gentler than for an adult's.
• The child's things. A small toy, a pinwheel, a stuffed animal in a weatherproof bag, a balloon on a birthday. Many cemeteries relax their decoration rules for the children's section, and most crews leave a child's grave alone. Ask the office what is permitted; the answer is often more than the sign says.
• Seasonal decorations. Easter eggs, a small Christmas tree, Halloween pumpkins. Parents of young children decorate the grave the way they would have decorated the house.
• Something for the birthday, every year. The birthday is the date that matters most, and it is kept for as long as the parents live.

What friends and family can send

For friends, the hard part is the years after. The first months bring cards and casseroles. The birthday two years on is spent alone. The single most valued thing a friend can do is remember the date: the birthday, and the anniversary. Flowers placed at the grave that day, with a note that uses the child's name, tell the parents that someone else is still counting.

Use the name. Parents of children who have died want to hear it and rarely do. "Thinking of Ellie today, and of you" is the whole message.

For parents who live far away

Families move after a loss, for work or to start again, and the grave stays behind. That distance is felt on every birthday. A standing delivery for the birthday, the anniversary and the holidays, with a photo of the flowers at the small headstone, keeps the grave tended and keeps the parents part of it. Many parents describe the photo as the thing they had been afraid to ask anyone for.

Infant and pregnancy loss

Many cemeteries have a section for infants and stillborn babies, sometimes with a shared memorial for pregnancies lost too early for a grave. Flowers there are welcome and are usually left alone longer than elsewhere. Hospitals and support groups can tell you where the section is if the family does not know. October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and October 15 is the day many families mark it at the grave with a candle and flowers.

A note on cemetery rules

The rules for a child's grave are usually enforced with a lighter hand, but they exist, and the annual clean-ups apply. Balloons and glass are the two things most often removed even from children's graves. Our guide to cemetery flower rules explains how to check with the office.