Memorial Day was always a big deal for my grandmother. Many times we went with her when we were kids to help her visit all of the cemeteries to leave flowers on the graves on passed loved ones. It would involve driving to different towns and out into the country to visit both sides of the family, hers and grandpas.

Yesterday was a quiet day and one of my brothers took mom out to the cemetery to visit my dad’s grave. It had been a couple years since she had been out there, and while they were there, my brother took a picture of the gravesite. Why you ask? Because somehow, somewhere, something happened to the peony that was planted on his grave 25 years ago, was no longer there.

Cue the mystery. It had been there, it grew, bloomed for years, and then yesterday, nary a stem, or remnant of its very existence. Which leaves us all perplexed as to what happened to the peony? Was it killed by chemical drift from a local farmer? Was it buried, run over by equipment when another nearby burial site was excavated? Was it admired a bit too much and made its way home with someone? No one knows for sure what happened, and one can only guess.

It bothered me though. More than it should have, it’s just a flower, just a plant out in a country cemetery. But it was a flower/plant/memorial to a loved one that was to be a constant reminder they mattered to someone, and for those years when visits couldn’t be made, there would still be a flower memorial to them, for them, and for us that still remain.

So I will be looking for a new peony this fall to plant. Hopefully this one will last longer, at least past my lifetime or I will go haunting.

Gardening/plant people aren’t very forgiving at times, at least this one isn’t.