Posted by
GeorgAnna
at
9:40 PM
DECORATION DAY
past and present
In the olden days, Memorial day was always on the 31st of May, and that meant flowers to the cemetery time. Daddy would pick all the lilacs and iris and anything else we had in the yard. He'd gather up tall tomato juice cans Mom had saved, and put them all in the trunk. Lots of flowers, because we had lots of dead people up there in Mt. Hope.
Daddy seemed to just love taking flowers up there, and we'd go first to Uncle Andy's grave out past the house where the caretaker took care of things, in the last spot in the left hand corner. Daddy would fill the cans with water, so the flowers would last.
He always got kind of teary-eyed at Uncle Andy's grave, after all that was his own little brother, just two years younger than him, and they'd practically lived together their whole lives. Uncle Andy died in 1933 which meant he didn't get to live very long, compared to Daddy.
I can't actually remember where we put all the other flowers but it was fun to wander around and look at the tombstones and read the names. Daddy knew so many of the people buried up there, he'd say, "Well, there's Leo Shurtliff" when we came to his grave. I remember Leo Shurtliff really well, he was some sort of clerk at church and we picked him up almost all the time cause he didn't have a car. We'd all kind of scoot over in the backseat so he'd fit in.
Some of the rich people had these big fancy tombstones. We'd usually be there for the ceremony they had, to remember all the dead people. Most times we'd also stop at the masoleum and that part was fun. It's this big stone building that's only opened on that day, so you could go in and look around. That's where the really rich people were buried, just put inside the wall and sealed up behind the marble. It was cold in there.
When we got older there were other graves to put flowers on also, like Bud Meng's parents, and Jeannette's baby Drake in the baby heart section, and then Aunt Jean and Uncle Sterling and Aunt Irene.
Now when we go we mostly put flowers on Grandma and Grandpa May's graves, and they are way over on the right hand edge, just below the baby heart, beside Uncle Sterling's grave. I'm still not sure why we do it, they aren't even there. But one of the best things for Grandpa May was the visiting. You'd walk around and run into all these other people you knew, some you only saw at the cemetery, and Daddy knew everyone in town so sometimes we'd be there a long time.
I guess Memorial Day mostly meant flowers and friends.
JULY 2007 MAY REUNION BAKER OREGON
I wrote that last part a few years back, but it's pretty much the same story, for a lot of people I suppose. But somehow it seems like a big expense for flowers if you don't have a yard full of them, like my Dad did. There's also the problem that I don't know anyone in Baker any more to run into at the cemetery.
It's still fun to go if we have some grandkids around to show and share with, but today it was just me and Dee here, and instead of doing flowers, we stayed home and planted some. The next time we're in Baker, I might go. But I still have the good memory of last year when we were having a family reunion there.
We had planned to meet early in the morning to "do the graves" but only 6 of us made it up that early. My daughter Karen, nieces Linda, Sherrie, and Gina, and my son David. It was just us, up there in the bright sunshine laughing and crying and being together. We divided a bunch of flowers from Safeway on about 6 graves and took a picture. (SEE ABOVE)
Out of all my years for decorating, that was probably the best, because Karen's husband Brad had just been killed the month before, and we just needed to be together, with Grandma and Grandpa May. Baby Drake belonged to Sherrie and Gina, and Linda's other grandparents are there. For the first time ever, I just KNEW everyone who had gone ahead was there, and they're waiting for us to join them later on.
It's not really the flowers or the visiting, it's the REMEMBERING
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