Monday will be Memorial Day. The mere mention of the holiday generates
swirls of memories in my mind. Our observance of the day has probably
undergone more changes in the seven decades I have lived than any other
holiday we have throughout the year. Tradition tells us it started as a
now we decorate the graves of friends and family, too.
Graves have been replaced by urns containing ashes, and today many people
have memorial services instead of funerals. I’m not making a judgment with
regard to that, just recognizing that once again things that were familiar
to me so long ago are becoming more rare today, like the fact that it is
mostly the older generation who now decorates the graves.
My Grandma Dame always called it Decoration Day. That was back when we
observed it on May 30, regardless of what day of the week it fell on. I
dislike the fact that it was changed in 1968 to the last Monday in May and
I believe the importance and meaning of the day was diminished by the
change.
My first memories of the day centered around watching my Grandma spend cold
winter evenings making large flowers out of crepe paper of varied colors,
cutting and pleating and folding them meticulously before attaching them to
a piece of wire as a stem.
When we moved from the country to town in 1951, we gained a large yard on
the corner of Wood and Apple Streets. My grandmother had the proverbial
“green thumb” and her flowers were the envy of the neighborhood.
On May 30 she would begin picking flowers early in the morning and bundling
them together so we could carry them to the cemetery. When it came to
fragrance, nothing could compare with peonies and roses and lilacs, but who
can ignore the beauty of an iris bloom?
Sometimes my Grandpa was able to drive us over to the City cemetery, but
sometimes we would walk - my Grandma, my two younger sisters and I - from
our home in Old Town, taking short cuts to the cemetery where we met up
with family and friends and spent several hours there with the adults
visiting and all the children playing together.
Time changes things of course, and the beautiful fragrant floral offerings
of Decoration Day gave way to the artificially colored, longer-lasting but
fragrance-free bouquets about the same time as we started calling it
Memorial Day and observing it on the last Monday of May. It has never been
the same since.
Everyone seems to have a different perspective on death, some refusing even
to discuss it because they feel it is morbid. Others, like myself,
realize the truth that life itself is terminal, and we begin the dying
process the moment we are born so we might as well prepare for it as best
we can. My mom and dad are still alive, but my 16 year old sister and 32
year old brother were both killed in traffic accidents, as was my beloved
stepfather at the age of 43.
I”m not able to get out and decorate graves anymore but my husband
continues to do that and then we take a drive on the evening of Memorial
Day so I can see the beauty of the cemetery.
Our roots go deep here in Laclede County and we have many generations of
family members to remember. My husband’s great grandmother and my great
grandmother were friends long before either one of us were born and our
respective family histories go back at least 5 generations in these Ozark
hills. Milan is the oldest of a family of 5 children and I am the oldest
of a family of 9 children.
I do a lot of thinking these days, reliving memories of past years while
anticipating my future home after my own death. I am curious about what
heaven will really be like but if it looks like the green hills of Missouri
in the springtime with the redbud and dogwood in bloom, I will be happy!
People talk about Memory Lane as though it is a one way road but there is
actually two way traffic on the highway of our lives. For each one of us
who is travelling into the sunset of life, there are many others going the
other direction heading into a hopeful future.
While I look back and remember giving birth and raising my daughter,
enjoying motherhood and being a wife, as well as spending about 45 years in
my busy professional life, my granddaughters are looking down the long road
I just came through, thinking about getting drivers’ licenses and what
they will do after high school and college, wondering what life will bring
to them.
The fun part is pausing at different times and places where we meet up
along the way just to treasure the moment.
Sixteen years ago I held my first granddaughter in my arms just 15 minutes
after she was born. Both of us were so different then than what we were
last Sunday as we gathered here for a belated Mother’s Day celebration.
She will be 16 this month, and I too have changed much since that time
which seems like just yesterday but also so very long ago.
So the road we travel leads onward and upward for each of us albeit in
different directions.
We are now back to Memorial Day, appropriately named because the day lends
itself to so many memories of loved ones gone and good times shared even as
we look toward the future and new memories. I love how gospel songwriter
Gloria Gaither put it: “We have this moment to hold in our hands and to
catch as it slips through our fingers like sand. Yesterday’s gone and
tomorrow may never come, but we have this moment today.”
©JoanRowdenHart May 2014
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