Denise Crosby: Cemetery rules and regulations delay closure for children

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The children of Guillermina 'Titi' Quiroz, including granddaughter Julissa Colon (left), daughter Elba Colon, son Pedro Lopez Jr., daughter Alicia Klimpke, daughter Hilda Chavez and son Edwin Lopez, place a photo of their mother on the burial site for her

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Updated: December 17, 2011 8:36AM

It’s been a rough year for Alicia Klimpke and her siblings. The unexpected death of their beloved mother in April rocked the world of this close-knit Aurora family.

Guillermina Quiroz, better known as Titi, was a vibrant, healthy woman — a housekeeping supervisor at Dreyer Medical Clinic and matriarch who raised her five children alone, with the strength and love that had defined her 65 years of life.

Doctors say it was a rare form of pneumonia, undiagnosed for months, that eventually led to the coma from which Quiroz never awoke.

Agreeing to turn off her ventilator after all hope was gone was the hardest decision her children ever had to make. But even as they coped with their grief, they were determined to find the best burial site for her.

They chose Mount Olivet Cemetery in Aurora, where they not only purchased a plot for their beloved mother, but also bought the remaining ones around her so they could be close in death, as they were in life.

They did not, however, buy a headstone from Mount Olivet, which Klimpke and her siblings claim led to a series of unnecessary frustrations that have kept them from finding closure even seven months after burying their mom.

Instead, the children purchased what Klimpke described as a beautiful and unique monument from Peter Troost Monument Co., one not available through Mount Olivet. But when the cemetery found out the family had gone elsewhere for the headstone, Klimpke said employees became uncooperative.

The first issue was height. Without supplying any rules or regulations, Klimpke says, Mount Olivet rejected their choice of stone because it was a couple of feet too tall.

So Troost agreed to make the marker shorter. The family, however, had to wait five months for it to be installed because it had to be specially made in China.

The next issue was the vase, also purchased from Troost. Klimpke said the family wanted it placed along the side — as many other vases at the cemetery were — so their mother’s picture could clearly be visible. Mount Olivet said the vase had to go in front.

“No one ever sat down with us and told us what all these rules were,” Klimpke said. “At this point, it felt as if they were just picking on us.”

Frustrated, the family called the Rockford Diocese, which owns the Catholic cemetery. An official there was empathetic and a compromise was reached: The vase would go in the front, but slightly off to one side.

Last week, however, when the stone finally was ready for delivery, Klimpke says Mount Olivet rejected it again, in part because the children’s five names had been etched on the back of the stone without approval.

She said they also were informed the monument was still a couple of centimeters too tall.

Beverly Hampton, manager at Mount Olivet, said the stone was returned this week because it did not contain the photo of their mother, as the family had specified. Turns out that was the fault of the monument company. When I asked about the other problems, including the height issue and names on the back, Hampton stressed that rules must be adhered to and that these were questions she could “discuss only with the family.”

Rosa Maria Cardenas, manager for Troost, says it’s not uncommon for hurdles to arise over cemetery rules, but the myriad problems in this case “were unusual.”

“We deal with death every day, but you have to be aware of the status of the people,” she noted. “Many families come in to buy a stone and they really don’t care (about the monument). This family was extremely distraught ... you have to be extra sensitive to what they are going through.”

The good news is it now appears the stone finally will get installed this week, Cardenas told me, and that Mount Olivet has OK’d the names on the back. (It seems stones for gang members sometimes can create problems, making the cemetery particularly cautious.)

But for Titi Quiroz’s children, the memorial has left a negative impression.

“We just want my mother to rest in peace with a monument representing her, where her children can visit and feel comfortable that it was the right place,” Klimpke said. “We thought we had found that place with Mount Olivet ... .”