Memorial Day Story

I could not let this day go by without once again sharing with you a story of mine first published in our EWGS Bulletin back in December 2007.

I was walking with my doggers in Fairmount Memorial Park (Spokane) soon after Memorial Day weekend back in 2007 and came upon a handwritten letter that had been placed in a bag and taped to a tombstone. The bagged note was blowing loose and so I picked it up and kept it. The letter read:

"To the Cemetary (sic) Flower Thief ........... I'm writing to tell you, whoever you are, that I don't appreciate having the planter stolen off my husband's grave every year. Also, those from other members of my family. 

"You are about as low as anyone can get---stealing from the dead. Don't you have any conscience at all? We who put flowers on our loved ones graves do it out of love. There is nothing else we can do for them and this is our way of saying, "I love you." Then to have some heartless thief steal them is stooping pretty low. I, and the other families whose plants you steal, don't know who you are, only that you are a selfish, mean thief who probably has a beautiful yard landscaped with our flowers, but God knows you. 

"Last year when I went to pick up my flowers to bring them home and plant them in my own yard as a continuing memorial to my husband, I met another lady from whom you had stolen three planters from her husband's and father's grave. She was heartbroken about it, especially for the one that one of her daughters had bought for her father. The girl had spent much more for it than she could afford but wanted it for her dearly-loved father and had planned to bring it back to him for Father's Day. You have no idea how much pain and anguish you bring to other people by your thievery and I very much doubt that you care.

"One last thing I'll say to you. I hope you will think better of it and not steal our flowers this year. If you do take them, I hope they will bring you nothing but guilt and unhappiness."

True story; I don't have that little note any longer but the Bulletin article included a facsimile of it.