Keeping graves clean in a cemetery is a never-ending task. Once you’re back, the circus starts again. Yet volunteers in Beilen have been rolling up their sleeves every week for years to keep the graves at the local cemetery clean.
The oldest cemetery in the village is hidden behind the thick beech trees on Torenlaan. Burials hardly happen anymore, only in exceptional cases. But it is not quiet: volunteers go to work every Thursday afternoon.
Lute van den Bult, together with Geert, is part of the permanent group of volunteers who work in Beilen every week. They are now a well-oiled machine, but that was different in the beginning. They took a provisional approach to the first restorations.
Over the years, the volunteers gain more and more knowledge and receive help from the area. For example, they now use special glue for natural stone and are regularly offered a cup of coffee. “That gives us the incentive to say damn it, we are doing it for something,” Lute previously told RTV Drenthe.
The volunteers got the hang of it and did a lot of work. In total, more than 1,500 gravestones have been tackled. “In the beginning there were twelve or thirteen of us. Sometimes it was a lot of fun despite the cemetery. Then we sat here singing ‘long-shall-she-live’ at a birthday party. Maybe a bit crude.”
Still, the volunteers are concerned about the future. There is no new growth. “I sometimes take a gloomy view of it,” says Geert. “We hope that the youth will come, that they will want to take over.”
Lute shares his companion’s concerns. “This is the first official cemetery and it contains a lot of history. I really hope that happens, because it is a part of Beilen’s culture.”
