This church is not only taking away the sentimental items and decorations that people place on the graves of their loved ones, but they are also throwing them away without notice or warning. This is disrespectful and needs to stop.

St. Anthony's Catholic Cemetery in Nanuet, NY began enforcing this policy of removing decorations from graves in 2010. Here is an article about the policy: http://nanuet.patch.com/articles/st-anthonys-cemetery-began-decoration-removal

Also, you can see the policy they have in place here: http://www.stanthonyscatholiccemetery.com/index_files/Page321.htm

There are multiple family members of mine buried at this cemetery, including my grandmother Margaret Kelly, my Great Great Aunt Theresa Crozier Farina, and my triplet cousins Aedan, Benjamin, and Nicholas Towsley.

My Aunt Noreen first had problems with this policy when, on two different occasions, the cemetery removed sentimental items from the grave of my granmother. My aunt gave my grandmother a beautiful plaque on the last mother's day that she was alive, and it stayed on her grave from the time that she died in 1994 until the year they started enforcing this policy, 2010. The cemetery said that all removed items would be placed behind a fence so that people could come get them when they're removed, but this did not happen. They disrespectifully threw the plack in the garbage, and did not show any remorse for doing so. Around that same time, they even dug up a rose bush planted at my grandmother's grave and threw that away as well. They didn't even fill the hole left by the rose bush in or clean up the soil from around the grave - they left a hole, wide open, at my grandmother's burial site.

My Aunt Noreen lost her infant triplet boys in the fall of 2010, and since then have had nothing but problems with decorations at their graves. Mutiple times, my aunt and uncle have gone to visit their sons, and the sentimental items they placed there have been removed. While some have been placed behind the fence (thrown might be a more appropriate word), other times they have just been thrown out.

It all came to it's boiling point today, April 9th 2013, when I was staying with my aunt and uncle, and we went to visit my triplet cousins grave. The cemetery, only just over a week after Easter, removed and disposed of three bunnies along with three palm crosses. When we went to the fenced in area to look for them, none of them were to be found, and over behind the area was a dumpster completely filled with palm crosses (see picture above).

This needs to stop. People pay to have their loved ones buried on this land, and while the church states that it is to stop lawn mowers from picking up decorations and potentially hurling them out at people, they are still removing decorations that are placed on the actual stone and not on the ground. The cemetery is knowlingly hurting people and not only disrespecting them, but their deceased loved ones.