5.9 C
Niagara Falls
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Letter: Flowers keep vanishing from parents’ graves

Dear editor:

For many years, my mother Brigitte Knauer lovingly tended the graves of her mother, mother-in-law and sister, as well as that of her husband Harry Knauer (my father), at Lakeshore Cemetery. 

She planted beautiful pots with fresh flowers and in the height of the summer watered them at least three times a week. 

As she got older, when I was in Niagara-on-the-Lake on Sundays, I watered them to give her a break. 

She once told me, when I'm gone, don't feel you have to do this. You can't get here every other day when it's hot. Just put some silk flowers there. 

Well, last September my dear mother passed away at age 85 and, just before Easter, when I removed the Christmas wreaths, I bought some beautiful, high-quality silk flowers and placed some arrangements in the vases at their graves. 

I secured them so they wouldn't get blown away, yet when I went to check on them a week later my parents' flowers were gone.

I looked all around but found nothing, so apparently they hadn't blown away but had walked away.

I replaced them and a week later they were gone again as well as one of my grandmother's arrangements. I was sick and was disturbed that anyone would do that. 

I replaced them yet one more time and hope that whoever took all my flowers is feeling at least a twinge of a guilty conscience when looking at them. 

Who does that?

I'm disgusted and I'm afraid my belief that all people are inherently good has been challenged.

I hope that common decency will prevail and this will not happen to anyone else. Respect the deceased and those who mourn them.

Christine Beatty
Niagara Falls

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