Christina Wohle installed a plastic skeleton Halloween decoration on her son’s gravesite, “to bring some humor and fun back to life that’s been really sad,” she said this week, “To bring a little levity to a very grave situation. Pun intended, no pun intended.”
Her son Cole Wohle died in 2016 at the age of 18.
On Monday, the skeleton, which appeared to be reaching out from the ground, was removed by a member of the Francestown Cemetery Commission for the third time in a month.
“We represent the whole town to maintain the dignity of the space, and it just felt inappropriate. It felt playful and spooky and fun, and it just didn’t feel right. We are charged with the responsibility of representing the whole town,” cemetery commission member Ethel MacStubbs said Tuesday.
Commission Chairwoman Polly Freese said that cemetery trustees have the right and responsibility to remove, without notice, articles that are inappropriate or improper to the general appearance of the cemetery.
“You buy the right to inter on the lot, not the right to do anything you want on the lot. Anything else, you have to do with permission,” Freese said.
Freese said decorations interfere with grounds keeping when they’re not kept directly adjacent to the gravestones, and that was one reason why the skeleton was inappropriate.
“It’s macabre too, to put a skeleton rising out of the ground,” she said.
Wohle said she saw the Halloween decorations as a way she was “able to put Cole’s fun nature back into life rather than just being sad about missing him. … He had a great sense of humor. He was one of the funniest kids I’ve ever met,” she said, adding that he loved Halloween since he was little.
“When I first did it, I wrote on Facebook, ‘Cole popped up to say hi’ … I have friends who have lost children. After I posted that the first time, they said thank you. They know what it is to lose kids. And to see something humorous out of it made them feel better.”
Wohle said she initially put up the skeleton on Oct. 2, and had not been contacted about the removal.
“They just took it upon themselves to remove it,” she said. “I would have been open to a discussion.”
Wohle said the Commission had contacted her in the past, after a group gathered in the cemetery to set off sky lanterns in Cole’s memory.
“I did not contact Christine because I thought it had not been her that had done it,” MacStubbs said, noting that many of Cole’s friends frequent the site. “I didn’t want to upset her … it never, ever, occurred to me to call her.”
“We took them down and put them behind the headstone twice thinking they’d get the message,” Freese said, and that on Monday she removed the skeleton to the area beside the shed on the property, where anything restricted per cemetery policy is placed before being stored in the shed for a month. Freese said she notified the police and town office after removing the skeleton for the third time.
Wohle said she felt singled out by the Cemetery Commission, noting that plenty of other items that are banned in the cemetery rules are present at other graves.
“We’re not singling her out, we would do the same to anyone. … If it’s inappropriate, it’s inappropriate,” Freese said.
It is difficult to enforce cemetery rules universally with only three Commission members for all three of the town’s cemeteries, Freese said.
“They’re enforced as much as we can,” she said.
She said that Wohle’s previous two Halloween displays had been left in place because they were up against the grave.
Wohle said she plans to write a letter to the cemetery commission and lodge a complaint at the next Select Board meeting.