Abbeville lady takes care of 16 graves for All Saints Day

In honor of All Saints Day on Nov. 1, Linda Bourque is spending the next few days changing out artificial flowers and cleaning graves at three different cemeteries in Vermilion Parish.
All Saints Day is a Christian holiday to honor the dead. Bourque will visit 16 different graves of her family members and friends, even though no one asks her to do it.
On Wednesday afternoon, Bourque fixed the flower arrangement on her grandmother’s grave behind Vermilion Catholic High School.
She removed the old plastic flowers, put them in a plastic bag, and brought them to her SUV.
Eventually, she will throw them in the trash. She then grabbed a handful of new pink and white flowers and returned to the grave. She sat on the granite and put in one flower at a time.
“I think I need more white flowers,” she said. She got up, walked back to her vehicle, grabbed a couple of white flowers, and then returned to the vase.
Each arrangement, created by Bourque, has its own character because of the different types of flowers in them.
Before Nov. 1, Bourque still has a few more graves to visit. She will soon head to the cemetery in Maurice where her parents are buried and then to Jacquelyn Street in Abbeville.
Bourque, 67, did not just start caring for family and friends. When she was in her 20s, she would join her mother, Anna May Bourque, and the two would tag team replacing flowers and cleaning graves for 20-plus years together.
Then in 1993, her mom passed away, but Bourque kept the family tradition alive.
“I do it for the love of my family,” explained Bourque on why she continues to take care of 16 graves. “I will continue doing it until I physically cannot.”
Bourque, who is from Abbeville, said her knees and back are hurting, making it challenging to get up and down from the ground. Depending on her health, she hopes to continue cleaning and painting everyone’s grave for the next three years.
With so many flower vases to fill, she spends the entire year buying artificial flowers. Throughout the year, she looks for specific colors of flowers that she puts in certain family members’ vases.
One vase has red, white, and blue flowers because the person is a veteran. Another vase has pink flowers, while another has only blue flowers.
“If I see some flowers I like, I buy them,” she said. “I once kept them in the attic, but I can no longer climb in the attic. I keep the flowers in a spare bedroom.”
She will continue caring for her family and friends’ graves if her health improves. What happens if she can not do it anymore?
“I do not know that answer,” she said.