PHOENIX — Stacey and Jim Lucas are winding their way through a north-central Phoenix Dollar Tree, green basket in hand.
They know the route, the task at hand and the task ahead. It is a ritual by now, and like all rituals, sacred and familiar.
"Many times," Jim Lucas said. "At least once a week."
Stacey Lucas is picking out bouquets of plastic flowers, placing the ones she likes in the basket Jim is holding.
The basket fills with flowers and $23.08 later they are out the door for the 30-minute drive to the next part of the ritual: Green Acres Mortuary & Cemetery in Scottsdale.
They walk through the mausoleum, searching. And then they find it.
A crypt with no flowers, the resting place of someone they have never met and don't know at all.
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Stacey Lucas stops, grabs a red bouquet of flowers from the bag and sets it inside the vase in front of the crypt.
"You will never be forgotten," Stacey Lucas said, then kisses her hand and touches it to the light-colored granite.
A few minutes and a few vases later, the pair arrive at the resting place of people they did know.
"Hi mommy," Stacey Lucas said with a smile, touching her hand by her mother's name.
Joyce Levey's vase is filled. Colorful flowers and balloons are inside the vase and extra decorations are attached to the granite by her name.
Her vase has been filled and filled again for three and a half years.
"There's not a day that goes by that I don't miss her," Stacey Lucas said.
Stacey Lucas said she took care of her mom for the last two years of her life and has many pictures of them together, both of them smiling for each of the photos.
Joyce died of lung cancer in 2020 and was in the early stages of Alzheimer's.
"My biggest fear was that she was going to forget me," Stacey Lucas said.
That didn't happen, Stacey Lucas said, recalling a moment her mom opened her eyes in the final week of her life in search for Stacey.
Stacey Lucas has come down to Green Acres to remember her mom since the funeral.
"For like the first year and a half or two years, I couldn't - like leaving I would be tucked into (Jim) in his armpit crying," Stacey Lucas said. "But then I started noticing all of these vases are empty. Empty, you know? And nobody should be forgotten about."
Jim Lucas carries the bags of flowers as they search out the empty vases they haven't filled.
Each time, Stacey Lucas stops, places flowers in the vase, and says aloud, "You will never be forgotten."
Jim, who's taller than Stacey, reaches the ones up high.
"It wasn't just for the people that are here, you know, for them, but also when someone comes to visit - like she said - they can't visit often, they're across the country, maybe come out on a holiday or a birthday or something like that, but then they see that someone - a stranger - is reaching out," Jim Lucas said.
They fill about 20 extra vases each visit to the cemetery.
"It's just purely from my heart," Stacey Lucas said. "It just hurts my heart seeing it."
The pair also brainstorm ways to acknowledge the crypts without a vase, planning a new fixture so each one will have something as a token of remembrance.
More flowers will be coming too, as Dollar Tree gave Stacey Lucas a $100 gift card to buy more flowers to fill the vases.
She's also fundraising on GoFundMe, asking others to consider taking extra flowers to the graves near their loved ones.
"It's not a race. It's definitely - it's gonna take time," Stacey Lucas said. "And as long as I'm alive, I'm gonna continue doing it."
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