Flowers for their grave

Doris
Bergstrom
Posted 2/19/03

Alys Johnson writes in the Swanson Family History that Grandpa and Grandma Peterson wished to be buried in a cemetery with a church on the premises.

In 1926 the Peterson's moved to a county home northwest of Princeton where they would be given supervision and care in their older days. Nearby was a cemetery with a church on the property, meeting their wishes for burial. There was sufficient money from the sale of their house and from their savings to pay for their stay at the home, as well to arrange their funeral expenses, including burial in this cemetery.

Shortly after moving to the home, Grandpa Peterson became ill with cancer. He died within a few months.

A couple years later, Grandma Peterson fell down a flight of stairs at the home, injuring her head. "Pa, Gertrude and I went to see Grandma after her injury," Alys writes. "We borrowed my brother-in-law's Chevrolet and I drove the car. I was 17 years old and wonder now how I could have done this. It was a very difficult 15-mile trip because there was so much snow. We became stuck once when we met a car as the road had only a single track. Pa was able to push us out. Grandma was alert when we saw her and talked with us. She died shortly afterward in January 1928. We were sorry that we were unable to go back and see her again before she died because of the great amount of snow." The Chevrolet Alys refers to belonged to my father, Lenord Bergstrom.

Riding the Great Northern train

Alys writes of Grandma Peterson's funeral: "Ma, Pa, and Annie attended Grandma's funeral. They took the Great Northern train from Bock to Milaca to Long Siding, a tiny town a few miles north of Princeton. Mr. Wills from the county home met them at Long Siding with horses and sleigh and took them to the county home where the services were held. Grandma had saved ten dollars for flowers for her funeral."

Grandma and Grandpa Peterson's cemetery wish did not last forever. "Some years ago," Alys informs us, "the church congregation joined with another group and built a new church a couple miles from the cemetery. The old original church building on the cemetery premises was then torn down."

Vegetables and flowers

My grandmother, Mathilda Swanson, enjoyed gathering produce from her vegetable garden and took delight in growing flowers. There weren't many perennial plants available to her besides irises, white and colored daisies, and some chrysanthemums, and an unidentified white button flower that grew profusely by the pump house. She had favorite annualsósnap-dragons, cosmos, zinnias, carnations, and lots of blue bachelor buttons. Cut flowers were placed in a favorite vase on the kitchen table.

I watched Grandma gather seeds from these plants. She stored them over winter in small paper bags that came from the store when she bought a spool of thread or a can of spices. The bags were never marked. She knew the seeds. When she and Grandpa moved to Bock after selling the farm, Grandma planted seeds from her farm flowers on their property in town. The flowers grew well and were enjoyed by their neighbor as well as my grandparents.

Learning to drive the Model T Ford

My mother (Esther Swanson Bergstrom) learned to drive the Model T Ford as soon as she and Dad married. I am certain I rode in the Model T, but do not recall doing so. My memories of riding with Mother and Dad begin in the 1929 Chevrolet. Mother regularly drove to the farm to visit her folks. Rarely did we return home to Bock in summer and fall without some vegetables from Grandma's garden.

On Sundays we went for rides in the countryside Mother, Grandma and us kids. Dad preferred to go golfing with his friends. A frequent auto destination was a cemetery. Sometimes Mother drove to the Milaca Cemetery, but mostly to the Borgholm Cemetery and to the little cemetery northwest of Princeton (I think, referred to as the Greenbush Cemetery) where Grandpa and Grandma Peterson were buried.

Grandma always planted flowers on our relative's graves, mostly because, to her, graves must always have flowers, but also to help identify where the grave could be found. Small gravestones and graves were quickly hidden in the long grass before cemeteries had caretakers that mowed the lawns. Grandma and Mother walked in the tall grass searching for Grandma and Grandpa Peterson's graves. Then one or the other would spot the flowers they had planted.

There would be weeds to pull and grass to trim with scissors to maintain the rectangular outline of the grave. We children were sent to prime the outdoor pump and fill containers with water for the flowers.

Superstitions from childhood

Alys writes of feeling uncomfortable in cemeteries. She and the other children wondered even that anyone would care to live near one. Maybe it was something that they absorbed from her mother's fear of death. Grandma carried superstitions with her from childhood and acquired others as she grew up. Some of these superstitions rubbed off on Mother.

When I was about nine years old, I came into the house with a wet umbrella. I fully opened the umbrella and set it on the kitchen floor to dry. Mother turned and gasped. She shouted at me to close the umbrella, admonishing me that opening an umbrella in the house meant someone would die. Her voice sounded as if it already was too late, that I had done the deed that would cause the terrible incident to occur. I quickly closed the umbrella. No one diedóbut I think about this when I open my umbrella to dry in my house.

Contrary to Alys' negative feelings about cemeteries, we children found visiting them enjoyable. We listened as Mother and Grandma murmured remembrances of the person who lay beneath the soil and we realized they found comfort tending to them in this way. We children roamed about searching for large, unusual tombstones, reading names of people we never knewóall the while, being careful to follow the spaces between the plots and not to step on anyone's grave.