Remember

I love Memorial Day weekend. Since I was a child we visited cemetaries that held the stones with names on them that were somehow linked to me.



We decorated graves, walked through the cemetaries reading the other headstone's names and poems. At the time the car rides were painfully long. We had to drive to Grace and Preston area. But, like clock, work we heard the stories.

As we wound up the lush green road that led to a lookout that contained great grandparents, we passed a hot spring. Us kids always peppered Dad or grandparents about the child drowned in that hot spring. (and of course any other gorry details we could get out of them.)

Next to that remote cemetary that is now full of stones, is the small house my Great grandmother lived in. AFter being newly married, she had to have all of her teeth removed and given denture. The long walk from the Dr.s ended at this small house.





Empty because grandpa was away for weeks at a time working.

I love that she carried on. Brought water in from the creek below, cooked, baked, scrubbed and gave birth to my Grandma Mary Lu, who now slowly enters into the grips of Parkinsons disease.


















I loved to look out from the little hill in Grace on the valley and imagine a snowstorm wrapping around a young child and a man on horse daring the ride into Preston, many miles away, to save her life.





Her little body suffering from a ruptured appendix and the gutt wrenching agony of her family, at home wondering if she would make it. She never did, but is carefully buried among the stones we decorate each year and spoken of at various times and always on Memorial weekend in the car.

Yesterday, Despite rain, I went with my mother to scrub and place gladiolas at her mom's grave.

There, next to her sister, Fern, who died young and single, is a humble head stone. It has her full name followed by succession of each last name she held in her lifetime. I identify with her because of her divorce and love to think of how she finished out her own life so honorable. Losing her second husband who loved us just the same, moving from her old house full of so many memories and then giving a good fight with her lung disease.

WE pushed the pink and purple stems deep into the grass next to her and hoped the wind wouldn't blow them to pieces. My sister's son crawled over headstones and we looked out over the land and the cemetary.

I looked down at Fern's humble stone etched with a rose and recall the times I would aggravate her by switching her lamp on and off; aching that I didn't really know how much pain she was in, or how lonely her life must have been.

The long drive to another cemetary gave me time to think about my mom's Dad. The memories I have of him, his yellow truck, the heart outside his trailer with his address numbers, and the time he spent at war. How he called my mom, Sis and how his laugh matches all his kids' and if I want, I can laugh just the same.

All this I get to pass on to my son...