People need to grieve in different ways, and often people want to remember and honour the memory of a passed loved one by caring for their grave site, including the placing of flowers on it to beautify the site.
Understandably, each individual cemetery (whether public or private) will have their own traditions, and their own rules for what is or is not acceptable as a practice at that cemetery.
Now, sometimes those rules should have some flexibility in them when it concerns the families and loved ones of those who are buried in the cemetery, particularly if those rules would not result in anything unsightly or detrimental being placed in that cemetery.
In particular, Weyburn's Green Acres Memorial Gardens has some rules that have caused a resident to take up a petition to change, because of a perceived unfairness in how those rules are carried out.
The rules in question have to do with the placement of flowers on grave sites; they are currently only allowed six months of the year, but from October 1 to April 1, no flowers are allowed on the grave sites.
This has greatly upset Estevan resident Gerald Shauf, who has his wife and parents and a number of relatives buried at Green Acres; in particular, he is upset because the Souris Valley Memorial Garden in Estevan has the exact opposite policy. Both cemeteries are administered by the province, by the Consumer Protection Division of the Saskatchewan Financial Services Commission, after first being administered by the Department of Justice.
When told that Estevan's cemetery allows flowers year-round, a government official said that's been the tradition at the Estevan cemetery for a long time, so it's just been maintained. For Weyburn, the rule will stay in place, in spite of an appearance like a "horse pasture" at times, especially in a winter with little or no snow as this area experienced last year.
A petition will show whether there is widespread public interest in this tempest of the flowers; there does seem to be a high level of interest in the issue, with one comment also pointing out it would be nice if the small flags on veterans' graves were permitted to stay on the grave sites.
Surely a compromise of sorts can be considered or discussed in this matter; after all, this has to do with the final resting place of many area residents, and their families only want to be able to honour their loved ones in a fitting manner.
