MEMORIES OF MEMORIAL DAY
It was just an everyday phone call, It was just a simple request;
But, oh, the memories it triggered, Memories so precious and blessed.
My grandmother’s beautiful flowers, peonies and lilacs and flags,
We picked them and handled them
gently, laid in baskets and boxes and bags.
Through April and May she would tend them, as they grew with bright
buds and full blooms
We children were not
allowed near them, we were tantalized by
their perfume.
Eagerly, we would wait for that morning that she called Decoration Day;
That’s what her flowers were grown for as April came, and turned into
May.
We usually walked to the cemetery carrying baskets and bags filled with
flowers;
We looked at all the gravestones with interest, sometimes we would stay
there for hours
While all of the adults were visiting with friends they had not seen
for years.
We never really comprehended the meaning of their laughter and hugs,
and the tears.
I just knew there was something so special on this day when the flowers
were in bloom
And it all came back in a moment today when the telephone rang in my
room.
Together we went to the graveyard this morning, my mother and me
It all looked so bright and so colorful, but it wasn’t the same, I
could see.
The flowers, though pretty, were manmade, no sweet perfume did they
bear
And people were all in a hurry and I saw no children there.
We cannot bring back those old times of fresh flowers in baskets of May
But it’s up to us to remember the true meaning of Decoration Day.
The veterans whose names are engraved there, their sacrifice, willingly
made
So that we could enjoy freedom’s blessings, let those precious memories never fade.
Written in memory of
my grandparents, Everett and Nellie Dame, my stepfather, Clarence Lindsey, my
brother, Densil Lindsey, my sister, Darella Kay Rowden, all of whom lie buried
in Lebanon City Cemetery, and in honor of my mother, Wilma Lorea Ward, who asked
me to go to the cemetery with her on May 25, 2002. Copyright Joan Rowden Hart, May 25, 2002
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