Wind?

When talking with some friends a few years ago about cringe-worthy anniversary gifts that Josh had gotten Kim, Josh told us that his brother had been working late on building his home one night and completely forgot that it was his anniversary.  Since he was returning home after many stores were closed, being quite desperate he stopped by the cemetery near his home and took flowers from one of the graves to give to his wife.  Sitting in my armchair, warm in my home, emotionally stable this morning, I can say at this very minute that if I knew that the flowers stolen were for that purpose, I wouldn't even care.  Especially since this happened, and I still can't stop the feelings of disappointment these many weeks later.

October 12

 October 13

 It had been quite windy, so I wondered if the wind had taken some of them.  I looked around the entire portion where Caden's is buried, but there was not a single bud.  Plus, if it had been the wind, other flowers would have been strewn about.  All around were bunches of flowers, nothing amiss, just as tall as these had been.

 But the closer I looked at them, it looked like the stems had actually been cut, not ripped at all.

 So I grabbed one of the flower heads and ripped it off.

 And found that is exactly what happened.  In less than 24-hours from the time my mom placed the flowers on Caden's grave, someone allowed their child (I hope it was a child!) to spend enough time out of their supervision (I hope they didn't actually watch it happen!) ripping the heads off of nearly the entire bouquet.

Because it was so soon to when they were going to take the headstone, I decided to take all decoration with me right then.  But if I'm being honest, I also felt a need to protect my things.  It felt a bit like a violation to see those stems stripped of their bulbs.  For a split second I wondered if it was some sort of hate crime, that's how violating it felt for a minute.  But when I spoke to level-headed Randy, he helped me realize it was probably just a little kid using their hands to see the beautiful flowers.  Maybe it was a little girl trying to make a daisy chain crown...