‘They’re never forgotten’: Brooklyn cemetery unveils COVID-19 memorial
BROOKLYN (PIX11) — Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn is unveiling a new COVID memorial, offering a space for remembrance and solace to those who lost loved ones during the pandemic.
Gustavo Padilla, a gravedigger at Green-Wood Cemetery, remembers the long and difficult months of the pandemic. “It was stressful, painful, uh, I cried,” he says. The pandemic left a deep scar on Padilla, who lost his uncle to COVID-19 and buried him at the very cemetery where he laid so many others to rest.
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“We weren’t even able to say goodbye,” Padilla reflects. “Hospital, hearse, ground. That’s all it was.”
Padilla is just one of many New Yorkers who will have a chance to pay their respects at the new memorial planned at the cemetery. The COVID memorial, a 200-foot-long tribute displayed along the cemetery’s fence, will be on view from May 3rd to June 3rd. It will commemorate the nearly 83,000 New Yorkers who lost their lives to the virus, as well as those living with Long COVID.
“You will see name plates, you will see it littered with poems,” says Gabrielle Gatto, Coordinator of Public Programs at Green-Wood Cemetery. She describes the memorial as a collaborative effort featuring tributes created by nearly two dozen organizations. Gatto emphasizes that the public is invited to contribute their own personal remembrances. “The cemetery is a space for public ritual and remembrance,” she says, “we will have this beautiful activation here for folks to come and add to it themselves.”
Images from last year’s tribute are shown, with this year’s theme being “Big, Slow and Majestic.” All of this is intended to offer a space for grieving and reflection for those who lost loved ones to COVID-19.
“They’re never forgotten,” Padilla concludes.
On Friday, May 3rd, volunteers will be stationed at the cemetery entrance with marker kits and paper so that community members can create their own tributes for the memorial fence.
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