‘Grief has no time schedule’: Bow parents share pain of restrictive cemetery hours

Every evening after work, Jennifer Ouellette drives to Evans Cemetery in Bow. She parks at the west end of the graveyard and walks the familiar stretch to the place where her two boys rest.

Kneeling before their headstone, she kisses her hand and gently places it against their photograph set in the stone. Then, leaning closer, she presses her lips against the cold monument to each of their faces—one kiss for Nicholas, one for Gavin.

Beside their resting place sits a blue chair, waiting for her. She sinks into it, letting her thoughts drift to her boys. 

“This is my place of peace,” Ouellette said softly, wrapped in a blanket near their graves on Wednesday evening. “The world is definitely darker without them here.”

No matter if the sun scorches or the cold air cuts straight through her, she sits. Ouellette’s done it every single day for the past four years.

Nicholas was sixteen, almost like a protector, she said. Gavin, just 6, was goofy, silly, and full of love, with the biggest heart in the world. Their lives were cut short in a car crash in September 2021 on Interstate 89.

Whenever the weight of grief presses too hard — a sleepless night, a quiet morning before work, or an ache that catches her by surprise — she returns to them.

Sometimes once. Sometimes twice. However, often her heart needs it.

But lately, something has changed.

“I feel like, especially as it gets darker, that I’m on eggshells,” said Ouellette. “It’s just another layer of stress or heaviness that I don’t need. It’s just heavy enough, everyday living without them.”

In most towns, including Bow, cemeteries close at dusk. It’s a policy meant to protect against vandalism and accidents that could leave the town liable. 

But for grieving families, especially parents who have buried their children, those rules can feel like an invisible wall between grieving and healing.

“I kiss a stone. What am I hurting by sitting here? I cry aloud sometimes, but I don’t think it bothers anybody,” Ouellette said, her voice breaking as she spoke of not being able to say goodnight to her children like most parents can.

Seeking compassion

Ouellette is not alone in her heartbreak.

Holly Hyslop, another Bow mother who lost her son Aidan, 19, to suicide almost six years ago, has faced the same barrier. She said Aidan had a gift for making people laugh and was the kind of young man who never hesitated to help anyone in need.

On Sept. 4, as Holly stood by his marker around 8:30 p.m., a police officer approached and asked her to leave Evans Cemetery.

“Whenever and whatever reason you feel the need that overcomes you, and you need to go express that,” said Hyslop. “Otherwise you’re sitting and wallowing and wallowing.”

Around the dining table in their home, Holly and Bill Hyslop, along with their son Jack, spoke about visiting Aidan’s grave a few times a year, whenever the pull becomes too strong to ignore.

Sometimes they simply sit beside him in silence; other times, they talk or, in Holly’s case, work on a crossword puzzle by his headstone.

As the days grow shorter, their window of daylight to visit closes in more tightly.

“Grief has no time schedule,” said Bill Hyslop. “When it hits you, it hits you like a hammer.”

Ouellette and the Hyslop family said police patrols at the cemetery began only recently, around September. They’d heard there were concerns about some friends of their children who had been gathering there late at night.

But they, who have visited the cemetery at all hours, said they’ve never seen that happen.

They don’t want kids hanging out or being disrespectful, and they understand why the police patrol. Still, they hope for a little compassion and flexibility. When someone is just sitting quietly, grieving the person they love, they ask that the police just let them be.

Bill Hyslop said that every once in a while, he’ll stop by Aidan’s grave and find a couple of beer cans left there and it doesn’t upset him.

“I don’t find it disrespectful,” said Hyslop. “I think it’s okay you had a beer with my kid. That’s cool. I’m completely capable of throwing the cans away.”

The issue has since reached the town’s selectboard, which is now trying to find a solution that balances empathy with policy.

“The setting of what seemingly is arbitrary hours when we don’t have gates, I think, has placed another invisible barrier between these residents and their loved ones,” said Eleana Colby, selectboard member at this week’s meeting.

Ouellette’s blue chair — the one she sits in every evening — was a gift from another local family. Little tokens of kindness surround her boys’ grave: a miniature football for Nicholas, who died wearing his jersey; a wind chime hanging from a tree nearby; and other offerings left by friends and neighbors.

These small gestures have always made her feel supported by the community.

But since that night when she was told to leave, something inside her has shifted. 

The next day, Ouellette called the cemetery sexton, hoping for special permission to visit after hours. Her request was denied. A friend, Michelle Vetrano Baga, then wrote a letter to the selectboard on her behalf.

“Why do you have to run through all these hoops to let a mom sit next to her kids?” Oulette asked on Wednesday evening, around 6 p.m., watching as a police car slowly circled the cemetery once again. “This is the town that supported us and loved us and cared and now it just feels different.”

All she wants to do is have the chance to say “goodnight” and “I love you” to her two boys at the end of her day, who aren’t with her anymore.

“They don’t even know how much extra pain this has caused me. I have enough to cry about,” said Ouellette. “I feel hurt, I feel sad, I feel disgusted, angry, all of those things.”