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MEMORIES OF MEMORIAL DAY


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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