Cemeteries fascinate me. Call me weird but I love history and from the time I was six years old I loved to accompany my grandmother to Cedarlawn Cemetery on West Capitol Street to put out fresh flowers on my recently deceased grandfather’s grave.
My grandfather died on August 18th, 1956, and back then there was not a good option of running down to WalMart or Hobby Lobby and purchasing a pre-made arrangement of plastic flowers already stuffed into a Styrofoam base. You did it yourself clipping fresh flowers in your yard and placing them in a Mason jar and carefully attaching to the grave with a coat hanger.
Mam-Maw and I would arrive at Cedarlawn and I would wander off studying the adjacent tombstones. I’d wonder in my mind what the buried person looked like, had they been happy in life, how did they die, and did anyone still miss them?
(I am accused 70+ years later of being overly curious….guess it started riding around with Mam-Maw in her “three on the tree” 1954 Chevy Bel Aire.)
The years went by. Mam-Maw passed away and joined Pap-Paw Chunn in their resting place. It then fell to my mother to keep up the flower tradition, but by this time artificial flowers were the rage and visits to cemeteries became much easier and quicker.
But Mother was a procrastinator and we usually found ourselves in a mad rush to get the flowers swapped out on Christmas Eve or Good Friday.
We’d follow up a week or so later with a Sunday afternoon drive for a visit to the zoo but turn in through the massive Cedarlawn gates to admire our floral creation from just a week before. Imagine our shock when we discovered our brand new, colorful arrangement was GONE!
I should explain that our lots are on the very east side of the cemetery, bordering with a side street that contains several houses with large front porches. Whenever we came out, we always performed our “floral rotation” with a few guests watching from across the street.
My late mother and I thought alike on many things and instantly we came to the same conclusion……”Grand Theft Flowers.”
We couldn’t wait for our next trip to Cedarlawn the following Sunday. Mother made another trip to Hobby Lobby and found some gorgeous yellow, blue, and white artificial flowers. She carefully arranged them in a large hunk of Styrofoam and then whipped out a black Sharpie fine point black marker.
On each leaf she carefully wrote …“These flowers have been marked with a curse. Whoever steals them will be cursed with a curse for their lifetime. Beware.”
And, just to be sure, Mother went out in the backyard with some plastic gloves and carefully intertwined strips of poison ivy among the arrangement.
She couldn’t wait until church and Sunday lunch were completed . . . probably did not hear a word Reverend Wilson Winstead uttered . . . and off we went. We even took my daughter, Amy. Amy was always especially close to my mother and I thought it would be helpful for Amy to “build some memories.”
Arriving at the gravesite, Mother wasn’t through. She’d worn this long, loose-fitting shift…we called it a “moo-moo”. . . and after carefully placing the arrangement at the head of the grave, Mother began a slow, deliberate dance . . . sort of a jig . . . and every few steps stopped and pointed her hands at the people sitting on the porch across the street.
Amy asked, “what is Gany doing?” I answered, “she has either completely lost her mind, or she is putting a hex on the people across the street.” At any moment I expected to hear the beat of Tom Tom’ and Native American chanting and torrents of rain begin falling from the heavens.
Instantly, the folks across the way disappeared, never to be seen again. And the Easter flowers lasted until the next Christmas!
Amy grew up to be an attorney with the Mississippi State Court of Appeals. She still has a lot of my mother’s trait, as do I.
If you are having problems with missing or stolen flowers give us a call!!!
Kendall Smith is a Northsider.
