On Tuesday, May 27, Neponset River House (NRH) members and staff visited the Medfield State Hospital cemetery to lay flowers on the gravestones of 841 former patients who died there between 1918 and 1988.
Medfield State Hospital, founded in 1892, once housed up to 2,200 people. Following a 1974 federal consent decree, the majority of people living at the hospital were relocated from large state institutions to community-based sites operated by organizations like Riverside, and the hospital closed in 2005. A number of people who come to NRH once lived at Medfield State, and some have fond memories of living there.
The gravesites were originally marked with small concrete squares containing only numbers, but advocacy groups and the Department of Mental Health worked to identify each person buried in the cemetery by 2005, adding granite markers bearing the names and dates of those buried there.
Since then, NRH has made this annual pilgrimage shortly after Memorial Day. Members spread out across the cemetery, carefully placing flowers donated by local florists and grocery stores on each grave.
The stone monument at the cemetery gate bears the touching inscription: “Remember us for we too have lived and laughed and loved.” This annual ritual holds deep significance for NRH members, who understand that honoring these individuals is an act of both remembrance and resistance. In a world where mental health stigma continues to marginalize vulnerable communities, their simple gesture of placing flowers is a powerful statement that every life has value and deserves to be remembered with dignity.
