Once she learned to drive, Teresa Wentworth would spend one spring day each year bringing flowers to her father’s grave at Evergreen Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Vancouver. She stopped along the way to pick whatever wild flowers she could find in ditches so as to not steal from anybody.
Wentworth’s father died when she was 12 from pancreatic cancer, and Wentworth, now 43, still makes it to his grave every year, although she now brings more flowers — and people — along with her.
On March 15, Wentworth led a group of 11 friends and relatives to the cemetery to place flowers at as many graves as possible, starting in the cemetery’s Baby Haven. It was the sixth year Wentworth, of Woodland, brought a group to the cemetery, and 11 people are the most who have participated in the day so far. The group brought more than 3,500 flowers, all daffodils, to put at graves. Never before had they collected so many flowers.
“I would just pick whatever wild flowers were in bloom,” she said. “I would trim small branches off cherry trees when the blossoms were out. Mostly, I would find daffodils, so that’s what we bring now. It’s tradition, and they’re pretty easy to find.”
