There is a gravestone in Cedar Park that needs tending.

Maybe it belongs to someone you loved. Maybe it's been years since anyone cleaned it — since anyone stood there long enough to remember. Maybe you've driven past the cemetery entrance and kept driving, meaning to stop, not stopping.

Or maybe you don't have a personal connection here at all. Maybe you simply feel called to offer care to a Hudson neighbor whose grave has gone unattended — someone whose family is far away, or gone, or not coming. Maybe you believe, as I do, that the dead deserve to be remembered by their community, not just their kin.

Either way, you're welcome here.

It's not that you don't care. It's that you don't know quite how to do this. You don't have the supplies. You don't want to stand there alone. You're worried about what it will bring up — or that it won't bring up enough. And every time an anniversary, Mother’s or Father’s Day, a birthday, or a simple pang of missing someone comes around, you want to do something — and you don't know what it is.

So you keep putting it off. And the grave stays untended. And so, in a way, do you.

I'm offering Gravestone Tending and Remembrance Sessions as a way to honor the dead — people you loved, or people your community has lost — with loving support by your side.

We meet at Cedar Park Cemetery (or another cemetery nearby). I come prepared with cleaning supplies, a small seasonal altar, chairs, and something to drink. All you have to do is show up. You're welcome to bring a photo, a flower, an object that connects you to this person — or to come with nothing but your presence and your willingness.

We clean the stone together. I teach you as we go — what to use, how to scrub, how to know when it's done — so you'll carry this skill for the rest of your life. I walk you through a simple remembrance ritual, and we make space for stories if you have them, silence if you don't, and always the simple act of showing up and bearing witness.

You will leave feeling connected — to a person, to a place, to the long thread of people who have called Hudson home. You will leave knowing that your grief, your care, your showing up — all of it was sacred and worth honoring. You'll have a new skill you can return to again and again. And we'll take some before and after photos too.

I have been tending gravestones for years, and doing it alongside others has changed the experience in a significant way. I believe that remembering should be a collective act.

By sharing our grief and by honoring our loved ones together, we are keeping their memory alive — and we feel less alone as we do it.

This is for you if:

You have a loved one buried at Cedar Park or in the greater Hudson area, and you've been meaning to go but can't face it alone. If the grave has been untended too long and that fact lives in you, taking up space.

Or — if you don't have a personal connection to the cemetery, but you feel called to this work anyway. If you want to offer care to a neighbor whose stone has gone unnoticed. If you believe, or want to believe, that tending the dead is something a community does together.

If you are ready to treat your own grief — and your community's — as sacred.

One hour. Everything provided. $88.

Sessions are offered on days that already ask us to slow down and remember:

• Wednesday, April 22 — Spring Cleaning

• Friday, May 9 — the Friday before Mother's Day

• Friday, May 23 — the Friday before Memorial Day

• Friday, June 13 — the Friday before Flag Day

• Friday, June 20 — Juneteenth, and the Friday before Father's Day

Each of these days carries its own invitation to honor someone. Come take it. Don't have a grave to tend? I have a long list of Hudson stones that need love. Come tend one alongside me.