Memorial Day Memories

Back in the 50's,Memorial Day was the day the whole community went to the cemetery to clean up the family plots, pull weeds, and put out fresh flowers from our gardens. Families who didn't see each other very often would visit and catch up on the year in between raking and weed pulling and putting out the flowers.

Perpetual care you pay for hadn't been thought of yet.

Everyone's roses were blooming and we had a Spanish Broom bush which had bright yellow flowers that smelled wonderful. My dad said my older brother, who died when he was three and a half, had loved them, and those went on his grave. It made him more real, somehow. I had been so young, I didn't remember him.

There were some mulberry trees, and the berries would be ripe. We kids would climb the trees and eat the berries. No one told us to stop climbing or eating the berries, but I remember I always felt just a bit wicked and adventurous climbing the cemetery trees. We were there to remember our dead, and there I was, having a good time with the other kids.

I was quite a lot older before I understood that Memorial Day was created to remember and honor our war dead. I think the remembrance of those who sacrificed their lives to protect our freedom is a wonderful thing. I also think the yearly community cleanup to remember all our dead was a good thing. Every family had suffered loss. Back then, there wasn't much medical science could do to save lives. Death was more a part of life. Accepted and respected. Not hidden so much, not such a surprise. The dead were actively remembered.

It's been a long time since I've been to that cemetery. It was my uncle's burial six years ago, and at that time, I noticed the headstone on my brother's grave had been broken at the base and was missing. The plot, in the New Mexico sunshine, was unkempt and untended. I did nothing; I simply settled my uncle's affairs and made the 700-mile trip back home.

Like so many others today, I am opting for cremation, and I am not leaving instructions for the ashes. It is a different time, with changing customs. But we still honor our dead who stepped forward and said, "I don't want to die, but I will put my life on the line for my country."

Honor and sacrifice still has value. And that is good to know.

God Bless America

I have a confession to make. It's nothing I can do anything about, nor does it have anything to do with the patriotism of my family..

BUT
I don't know about the Civil War. Family records don't go back that far. I do know my paternal great-great-grandparents emigrated to the U.S. from Germany to escape the draft there. They settled in the Dakotas, which makes the Civil War moot on their side.

So far as I know, no member of my family has ever gone to war or served in the armed services for the United States. Since I know so little of my extended family, there might well be great-uncles or cousins who served. But none of my immediate family did.

Spanish American War? My great grand and grandfathers were busy establishing homesteads in the West. First World War? My father was a boy. Second World War? after Pearl Harbor, my dad went down to sign up with every other able-bodied man in the countrey. But he was 40, and they had plenty of younger volunteers. They told my dad to go back and sell war bonds, which he did very sucessfully..

They did call back when he was 44. By then, he had a two-year-old with lympho sarcoma (cancer) and a new baby (me). They opted to let him mind the home fires, which he did. I think nowadays,regardless, they would have sent him.

My brother died, of course. And I was a female. So no foul, no danger of war. In the late 1960's, I married a man who planned a military career. Bur the Air Force looked at X-rays of a former car accident he had been in and said "uh--uh" So he went into law enforcement instead.

So my family has been in this country maybe 100 years or more and none of us have gone to war.
We have voted, we have participated in community. But not one of us has died for our country.Or fought for it.

On Memorial Day, I remember my parents filling up a bucket with flowers and garden tools and heading for the cemetery. I had a vague understanding it was for the war heroes, but my parents also thought it was a day to remember any loved ones. The cemetery would be full of friends, and some of us kids would climb the mulberry trees and eat the fruit, which wasn't. bad.

I am an American. Whole-hearted. I cannot be the only one with no service in my family history, but it feels almost shameful. But that is my history. This is America. Make of it what you can.