Why did Paige's mother take her to visit cemeteries when Paige was a child?

Paige goes for a walk and ends up at a cemetery across town. Paige remembers how her mother used to take her to cemeteries when she was a child. Paige's mother, May, wrote obituaries for the Chicago Tribune and would often go to visit the gravestones of the people for whom she wrote these obituaries. May wrote the simple obituaries but, at times, was allowed to write the longer ones, which would appear in the paper as a small article. May clipped the obituaries from the paper every week and kept them in a scrapbook, which she left behind after she ran away.