An acquaintance once referred to gladiolas as funeral flowers, and experiencing it almost as a personal affront I’ve spent years trying to convince myself and others that as home décor they make a striking and modern impact. The colors are so luscious, and I don’t mean those garish combinations like yellow with a red eye or purple and yellow in the same flower. I love butter yellow ones combined with all the peach, salmon, and orange shades, or purple, pink, and fuchsia with what the growers insist on calling blue. I was recalling recently that Granddaddy Melker grew gladiolas in rows but I don’t remember ever seeing them in an arrangement in the house. Where did they all disappear to? Then I had an image of him fanning the flowers in a bouquet in a large, grey-painted, hoop-handled wicker basket that was just for holding flowers at the cemetery. After lunch, he would take the flowers to his little son’s gravesite and then continue on to the American store for groceries or to the bank or to Kovatch’s garage for service on his two-toned blue Oldsmobile 88. This was done without explanation or fanfare, repeated often throughout our summer visits. I hadn’t thought about this for years, but I suppose he would have said that gladiolas are funeral flowers.