Memorial Days—Old School Style

One of my clearest childhood memories... and maybe it isn't actually clear, so much as repeated, step-by-step, year after year, is visiting the cemetery with my mom and grandparents on the Friday of Memorial Day Weekend.

My mom and I would drive over to my grandparents house (all six blocks) and make sure they were on their way. I always wanted to ride with them instead of my mom because that is sort of the kind of brat I was... (Actually, I am clear—parents HAVE to discipline, grandparents get to be all fun, all the time), but this yearly pilgrimage found them with a back seat full of buckets. Buckets of peonies in water. Buckets of iris. Buckets of lilac some years. And a bucket with shears and trimmers and a sponge.

We drove in two cars because of the buckets.

The cemetery is barely out of town on the easy slope of a hill overlooking wheat fields and with the mountains in the distance. It is a pretty place to spend eternity... you know... other than the underground part. But underground was really the only option ever considered until about the 80s, so as far as burial spots go, this is a nice one. It is certainly a nice place for the loved ones to come spend some time with those who've passed.

But it's a NASTY turn in. It is a left turn off the highway and the view ahead TURNS, so it is WAY too short a view for the speed. I think since then, the slowdown coming into town starts a lot earlier, but I do remember some near misses turning into the cemetery It was a little too heart-pumping for our destination, but it wasn't like that was our fault.

The roads in the cemetery were one lane, but of course that weekend, we were rarely the only ones present. Still, there were also a lot of graves unattended.

See... humanoid form, or flat cement rectangle?

I wanted to explore the fancy statues, but our dead were from a more frugal era--fewer trees, because it was the new part, for one. But also the scale. Their children had survived the depression and buried them with humble, flat headstones. The trimmers were to outline the stones so the grass didn't overtake them. My grandma trimmed the neighbors, too—it wouldn't do to let those lying next to those we love be forgotten. Then she'd go fill one of the buckets with water and sponge off the dust accumulated over the year. My great grandparents were always the primary stop, though we also looked for family friends and would stop to clean up any we found. We left flowers by all of them.

I loved wandering the headstones—looking for those born a REALLY long time ago (I adore old stuff and the stuff in Idaho is only so old)... or those who lived really short lives. Those always made me sad—the tombstones of the children. Still, they were also the treasures—the saddest stories there (and possibly the reward for those who did math easily). Maybe my inner storyteller was already at it.

In 1977 we added my dad to the stops for the first time. That was hard. It wasn't like I ever forgot he was gone, but it was the first time we were visiting 'my grave'--one for somebody I'd really known and loved. I mean one of my great grandmother's was there and I knew her, but she died when I was about 5 and lived in a nursing home my whole living memory, so that isn't the same.

This one! But we came at it from the other end. 50 years later.

But as sad as it was, it also was a time of family closeness. A ritual we did together. And it was always followed by a long weekend at the lake—usually the first warm one of the year. My grandparents had a lake cabin that had a big room upstairs with three double beds and two cots, and a big room downstairs with another foldout bed, so the whole fam-damily could fit if we forced it (and those were my FAVORITE weekends--when we all crammed in)--fishing with my grandpa, making forts with my cousin, canoeing in the lake (WAY too cold to swim in a snowmelt lake until AT LEAST the 4th of July), hiking to the train tracks where we'd place pennies to be flattened and dare each other (if no adults were present) farther and farther onto the tressle.

They were wonderful weekends, but I think all the more amazing for the bittersweet start.

I wish you all a wonderful long weekend with just the right amount of remembering.