Cemetery Flowers

I helped my parents at the cemetery in Osseo today. We scrubbed off the lichen, pulled away the creeping Charlie, swept away grass clippings, raked the dead leaves, and wired down the flower arrangements we put together this morning. We wanted all of the graves to look nice for my Uncle's funeral tomorrow. I carried a pile of dead leaves to the woods. When I turned around, my uncle's last name was on the back of the grave closest to me. It is not his family's headstone, but it surprised me. I had been wanting to catch a picture of my parents tending to the graves, but we were almost finished and the moment never seemed right. I suddenly had the moment and the angle. Had it not been for his name catching my attention, I would have not captured this image which tells a previously untold story of an important family tradition.