Memorial Day

Ginny just sent me this.
Memorial Day Memories

By Ginny Jackson
When I was growing up Memorial Day was May 31. It didn’t matter what day of the week it arrived on we celebrated it on that day. Preparations in my family began the weekend before with my mom and her sisters making lists of whose graves to decorate. These consisted of grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends, people who they barely knew but whose families lived out of town, and in-laws. All were going to have a live flower bouquet on their graves. There were ice cream cone shaped containers for the flowers and these had to be cleaned up and checked to make sure they still held water.
Over the years these were replaced by aluminum foil covered coffee cans that were saved throughout the year. If the weather cooperated there would be peonies and maybe irises which were gathered from their yards. For several years there were ladies in town who grew flowers to sell for people to put on the graves. In the beginning the bouquets were already made but as years passed we would pick the flowers ourselves and pay for them. In later years small plants from garden centers were used. There containers would be “gussied” up with colored foil and ribbon.

The day before Memorial Day mom and her sister, usually Jean would put the flowers and the containers in a car and head to the Ames cemetery. I remember going with them and it was quite a social event. There would be other relatives and friends there decorating graves and they would catch up on family news as the containers were filled with flowers and water that came from outdoor faucets. One year it poured down rain for the days leading up to Memorial Day. My cousin Rick and I were given the containers and told where to put them. I remember being soaked to the skin finding the grave of a woman my grandparents had helped after her husband had died. We still have a table they bought from her so she would have some needed money. At least twice mom came home later than usual because they had shut the trunk lid with the keys inside. These were the days before cell phones and they had to get a ride from someone they had been visiting with to go home and get another set of keys. A few times gravestones were gently driven over too. One year when my granddad visited the cemetery he saw that flowers had been put on his “side” of the gravestone he would someday share with his wife. He muttered and moved them all over to her side as his daughters fussed about it looking uneven and not as pretty as it had been. “By God I am not dead yet and I don’t want any out of towners thinking otherwise!”

Since Memorial Day has been moved to a Monday, creating a three day weekend it is considered the beginning of summer and a time for travel for a lot of people. Memorial Day is still a day of remembrance where people all across the United States decorate graves, take part in parades, memorials, and pause a moment or two to honor the service men and women who died in the armed service and miss the ones they love..

I have always considered cemeteries a place of peace and a place to wonder about the lives led by the people whose names and sayings are on the gravestones

Note from Jay. My Sis does good writing. The above is Mother's grave. I went out today just to check on things. Aunt Jo does the graves now. Mom and I used to joke that there were so many to decorate that it was almost like drive by decorating. Slow down and toss the flowers out. Of course, we did not do that. And lest we forget. I am watching the Memorial Day Concert from our nation's capitol on PBS ad they are playing the Armed Forces Medley. Tears and emotions of gratitude for all that these men and women have done and are doing for our nation. May they come home safely and please let peace come to our world. j