Return the gravesite flowers

Dear editor,

Two days before Memorial Day, my daughter drove to Mountain Home to put flowers on her Dad's grave and some flowers on the graves of our friends.

I had to move three years ago after my husband died because I couldn't maintain my house anymore. I miss my friends, but I have made many more here in Twin Falls.

My husband was the foreman on the highway for over 30 years and had the biggest section of road to maintain with 12 men under him. I worked at different places until I got hired at the hospital but had to retire because of my health.

I no longer have a car, so I can't come over to the cemetery when I want. But ever since I moved away from Mountain Home, I have kept a bucket of flowers on a shepherd's hook on his grave, and when they get to look like they are ready to change, I help change them.

My daughter and her husband come down from Washington to see if the flowers look okay or were ready to be changed or thrown out. I put new flowers in the bucket, and my daughter and her husband took them back to my husband's grave.

I've done this for 20 years, but last year, the flowers had to be thrown out, so I bought a new, little bucket and put yellow roses in it. My daughter and her husband put it on the shepherd's hook really tight with wire.

When my daughter returned to Mountain Home this year, there were no flowers; just the hook. I don't know if I want to put flowers on the grave anymore. However, if someone took them, I wish they would bring them back.

— Joyce Gifford, Twin Falls