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Mary
believes that working with plants has a therapeutic effect, one that draws in
people who are suffering, whether they have loved ones buried at the cemetery
or not. This is the unexpected and emotionally difficult side of working in
the greenhouse. Mary's work includes maintaining many of the perpetual care
plots, ones where there is a contract agreement for a certain type of decoration
to be placed on the grave at particular times every year. Sometimes, fulfilling
a 100-year old request by a husband to have a corsage of flowers placed on his
wife's grave each year on her birthday strikes Mary as a supremely romantic
gesture, but at other times it saddens her.
Every
April 11, Mary assembles a vase of flowers for the grave of a young teenage
girl on the anniversary of her death. Pulling the flowers out of the refrigerated
case, cutting the stems, and arranging them in the vase she talks about how
this order always has a strong effect on her. Her own daughter Pauline, now
14, was born on the same day as the deceased girl. Mary takes this coincidence
of dates as a sharp reminder to be thankful for all that she has in life that
she takes for granted. |
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