A New Hampshire family brought Halloween to their son’s grave, but the cemetery hasn’t been taking to the spooky spirit.
Rob and Christina Wohle wanted to have “a little fun with death” when they decorated their son Cole’s grave at the Francestown Cemetery Commission with a skeleton cowboy rising from the ground.
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They lost their 18-year-old son three years ago and thought their humorous decorations would be a great way to keep his witty spirit alive, Wohle wrote on Facebook.
“I’m getting tired of Cole’s Halloween decorations being removed! This is rude! There’s nothing wrong with having a little fun with death,” the post reads. “Sometimes you have to laugh because there is so much to cry over.”
Wohle went on to explain that the cemetery cited landscaping as the reason for taking down the decorations. According to Wohle, the skeleton interfered with their morning mowing schedules, but she added that there’s no grass growing on his plot.
Global News was unable to contact the cemetery’s management directly. However, in speaking with local paper Union Leader, chairperson Polly Freese said the cemetery was within their rights to remove the skeleton.
“It’s really frustrating because you’re dealing with emotion on one side, and with the law on the other, and we’re coming across as bad guys,” Freese said.
But Wohle said that they never received any direct contact from the commission, and had received nothing but support and love from the community.
“None of them have been offended. We have received so much community support, people who knew Cole and know that we were honouring his spirit and humour,” she said.
Cole died after suffering a fatal heart attack after a rodeo event.
Part of honouring his life, Wohle told Global News, is keeping his sense of humour and joking nature alive.
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She even consulted her other son, who had just turned 18, on what he thought.
“He replied to me, ‘Well, people might think you are a little crazy, but I love it and I think Cole would think it was hilarious,'” she said.
The crafting began with a visit to a local craft store, followed by picking out the perfect cowboy hat for their late son, who grew up riding broncos.
“This year, my younger son and I were walking through the craft store looking at different things, not finding anything that really spoke to us until we passed a bag with a skeleton that looked like it was popping out of the ground,” she explained.
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“The skull had a big grin on its face,” she continued. “After leaving the craft store, we went to the local feed store and picked out a cowboy hat that would fit the skull.”
The cowboy hat, she said, really completed the decoration.
They set up the decorations in the cemetery, snapped a photo and shared it to Facebook to amazing responses.
“His friends told me that they were going down to take a photo with him,” she shared. “A local mother who lives near the cemetery told me that she way going to walk her kids down to the cemetery to see him that night.”
Though Wohle doesn’t plan on setting up the decorations again, she will be decorating for other holidays as her family has done every year for their son.
They left the skull and cowboy hat on his grave after taking the rest of the skeleton home. Wohle alleges that the “chairperson of the cemetery commission was caught throwing them in the trash.”
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It’s a way to honour the big life he had, and to make missing their firstborn son a little easier.
“Losing a child is the worst pain imaginable. It is not natural to have your child leave this earth before you,” she said. “It is a pain different and deeper than losing a spouse, parent brother or sister.”
“Missing him is hard. My son was a wonderful, witty young man with a smile that would light your world.”
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