In Memoriam

In my family, Memorial Day was not just a day where we remembered the veterans of our nation. It was not just a day to venerate those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. It was a day to remember all of our loved ones who had gone before us.

Yeah, that’s right. It was pretty heavy stuff, especially when I was a kid. As much as I want to, I can’t say that I enjoyed it. I don’t remember a weekend at the lake or BBQs or my parents sitting around in the yard with their friends drinking or playing cards on Memorial Day weekend. I remember tiny little graves of the babies as we visited the aunt who died at three days old. I remember the graves of great-grandfathers I never met, or did not remember meeting.

We went to the gravesites and placed flowers. There was not much money in any of our families, so flowers were carefully picked up the following week and maintained and wrapped in plastic in my grandparents basement during the off season. We trekked across rural Missouri and Oklahoma and visited other states in our minds. My parents and grandparents shared stories—some good, some bad—passing the chain of memory and family history and oral tradition down the line:

“She used to tie pickles up in string and around her babies wrists when they teethed. If they choke, they flail their arms, you know. It would pop right out, since it was tied around their wrist.”

“He would cut his own fishing pole from the trees near his favorite stream. He said that it always worked better than anything you could buy at the store.”

“Her daddy was a judge in Kansas, you know. Her family did not approve of him, so he literally stuck a ladder up to her window one night, and they ran away. Really. They eloped!”

“I remember when we were first married and so poor. We barely had anything to eat. She would bake two pies every morning, and bring one over to me every afternoon, saying that she didn’t know why she kept baking too much. I don’t know what we would have done if it wasn’t for her.”

“He worked in the limekiln, you know. When I was a kid, they would bus us out there, give us tours of the place, and show us where we would hide if we ever came under nuclear attack. That was the plan. If the warning came, all of the children in the schools would be bused to the limekiln, and we would wait it out there. We were very excited to eat our lunch in their cafeteria.”

When I was young it bothered me because my friends were swimming and camping. When I was a teenager it bothered me because I was then old enough to remember some of the individuals interred at the graves we visited. Seeing the headstone of my great-grandmother, one of the greatest women I ever knew, brought sharp, fresh waves of loss every time. It never lessened.

Now—I am the parent, and we live a ways away. After college, I fell away from visiting the graves. It’s hard to start back. Also, I enjoy the BBQs and the fun. The swimming. The trips we make to state parks with the boys (our burgeoning tradition).

And yet—I feel as if my children are missing out on important traditions. I did not enjoy the tradition, but I realize now, as an adult, just exactly how important the tradition itself was. It was not about placing flowers on graves—our loved ones are not really in the ground their bodies now inhabit. It was about keeping the memories of our family—something larger than any one of us—fresh and alive and readily available for any of us who started to wonder just exactly where it was we were from.

It was especially important to my family, because oftentimes the only way to remember someone was in the oral tradition. There are little to no records about some of the truly illustrious characters in my family’s past.

I cannot visit the graves this weekend. Instead, we will work on a bit of a family tree with the boys. So we can begin sharing the stories on a more consistent basis. And maybe next year will find us in Oklahoma, on Memorial Day weekend, standing in front of my great-grandmother’s grave. I can then tell my children about how she drove, and how she fried potatoes and how she taught me how to bake. That she was a nurse and she was color blind and that she believed in ghosts.

Perhaps the actual act of visiting the graves or the memorials, of placing the flowers or the flags make it just a bit more real—no matter if it is the sacrifice of our veterans, or the stories of our families.