EDITOR:

Generally not one to get on my soapbox now that I’ve retired, but there are times and under circumstances where one needs to vent. Our extended family has taken great pride over several years in honoring our deceased family members by taking special care of their grave sites and remembering them with flowers. Our memorials are generally in place for Memorial Day. My brother has been the primary caretaker and then collects the monies for flowers from the rest of the family. It became evident over the past two to three years that he was providing a buffet for the deer population. This year was to be different. He made arrangements with Trotter’s Floral to have a lovely, false flower arrangement (silk) created. He figured that the flowers would last longer, deer would not eat them, and the watering task would be eliminated. The arrangement was beautiful, all we desired. Flash forward to this a.m. I do not know what to say except someone took all flowers from my parents’ and grandparents’ graves. Who does something like that? I can not wrap my thoughts around the disappearance at all. Do people not know that this act has a name? Desecration of a gravesite. Is the thought that the people are dead, they will not miss them? Gee, those flowers are beautiful, think I’ll just take them home. I do not know.

I doubt that they will be returned. I am certainly disgusted, angry, and confused. Someone wanted flowers so badly that he/she felt the need to take them from graves in Fernwood Cemetery.

Note: These flowers were not a plastic set up; they looked real. They were not removed by maintenance staff. They did not blow away. The grave sites are not in the same section of the cemetery. Amen.

Helen M. Netchey

Gladstone