Memorial Day

While I realize that nationally, Memorial Day is all about war and heroes and sacrifice, in my own memory, it is about family--family and flowers.

Today, my son and I are going to do our own version of those long ago trips to the family cemeteries, withou the trunk full of fresh cut flowers from the gardens of Grandma and my aunts and uncles and parents.  We tried to go yearly though after 18 it turned into once every 5 years or so.  We never went to my fathers, too far away and if we stayed home, we just went to the lake.

My parents weren't from around here.

From those memorial day trips, I heard all kinds of family stories.  About my uncle collecting a mouse from between graves and slipping it in his pocket.  My grandmother laughed, but was obviously a bit horrified.  Farm people--animals don't live in the house if you are civilized, there were barn cats to eat mice and farm dogs to watch the yard but mice--just nasty.

I heard about relatives long gone that my grandmother remembered like they just left. (I'm starting to get that, time does strange things in the mind, telescoping, shrinking, like seeing 2 times at once sometimes.)  I heard about who was in which war, and who died young and who died very old.  She even told us about the little marker in the family plot that said "baby",; a family traveling through that lost a child while staying nearby.  There were details back then.  Just a little sadness now for the family that lost a baby and then moved on to where they were going.

Back then, the roses and peonies were in bloom on this day.  And while there are still a few straggling roses and the roses will repeat quite a few times this summer, the peonies have been gone a while and the lilies are starting.   The spring started very early this year.

We used to go to multiple cemeteries on this weekend, because while they were my one family, they were not related 150 years ago when they started getting to that area. The cemeteries were small or large, well tended or a little seedy and showed no signs of corporate control.  They had large trees or no trees, marble and granite or concrete and limestone, and in many of them, the graves had a rose or some other flowering plant that came back year after year.

So today, we are going to my parents grave.  It is in a cemetery that was new when they bought there.  A package deal they purchased after some death in the family without telling us kiddies what was going on.  A deal that started with a cold call by a marketer of death.  The cemetery is a long way from their home, but we moved to a city that was sprawling.  It was a cemetery with a plan, a marketing plan, a maintenance plan, and its own flower shop.  It is death done by big business.  there are no weeping angels or little marble children holding hands.

I hate that cemetery.  It is a cemetery that no one wants to go to, no one wants to wander in or pray in or sit and be alone for a while.

It is a cemetery that never quite meets the promises they sold my parents.

But I go because my son invited me and his kids could use the roots of such a trip.

I'm buying flowers at the supermarket.