It’s unthinkable, really.

While 83-year-old Sarah Miller on Saturday morning knelt next to the graves of her husband and infant daughter at Oak Hill Cemetery, someone opened her car door and made off with her purse.

Sarah Miller, 83, is busy getting a new driver's license, closing bank accounts, filling out Social Security forms and arranging to change the locks on her house. While visiting the graves of her husband and infant daughter on Saturday at Oak Hill Cemetery, someone stole her purse from her unlocked car.

It never occurred to Miller who had walked away from her car with an armload of flowers to leave next to the headstones of her departed loved ones that she should lock her car or take her purse. After all, she was in a cemetery.

“It never entered my mind,” Miller said.

So when she returned to her car after maybe 15 minutes of quiet reflection, probably no more than a dozen feet away she was shocked to discover someone had robbed her.

“I can’t believe that somebody would do something like that while you’re out there putting flowers on a loved one,” Miller said. “It’s just hard to think that we have those kinds of people.”

Miller reported the theft to Lawrence Police, who say that hers was the only such report from a cemetery during Memorial Day weekend. Now she’s going through the tedious process of replacing all the essentials that disappeared with her handbag: driver’s license, Medicare card, personal checks, spare keys to her car and house. She’s been terrified that the thief would use the keys to get into her home.

“The first night, I left on every light inside and out,” Miller said. “I couldn’t hardly go to sleep.”

She said she likely would follow the advice of police, who recommended that she change locks.

There were some items in Miller’s purse that she won’t be able to replace, like more than $200 of her recently cashed Social Security check. Miller, who’s retired and on a fixed income, said getting by without the money was “going to make it kind of hard on me.”

But she’s willing to forget the cash and turn the other cheek.

“I just hope that somebody finds it, takes the money, calls me, and I’ll ask no questions if they just bring my purse back,” Miller said. “I’ve got pictures in there that I’ll never be able to replace.”

Miller has been visiting the cemetery each Memorial Day weekend since the late 1930s, when her first-born daughter, Amerette, died at just a week old. Miller’s husband, Cecil, passed away about nine years ago. The journeys are always solemn, Miller said, but this year’s was just plain sad.

“It just hurts,” Miller said. “Ever since Saturday, I think I’m asleep or something and I’m going to wake up. I can’t believe that something like this has happened, especially at a cemetery.”