Memorial Day

I keep hearing spots on the radio about the family vacation for Memorial Day. I see people buying their things for cook outs, but I see very few flower arrangements leaving the Walmart near me at least.

For those of you that don't know, since it seems to be lost. Memorial Day is a day dedicated to honoring those that have passed on. When I was a child spending the summers with my grandparents, both sets observed this day about the same.

Saturday Morning we would get up and go out into the flower beds and cut and gather all the flowers that still looked nice and at my mom's mothers we laid them out in several piles, each was set up for a different person. Not only did she tend family graves, but also the graves of some children who's family had moved away. We wrapped a wet paper towel around the end of each group and all of us loaded into the car and went to put the flowers on the grave, afterwards if we were good we would stop by dairy queen for ice cream. At my father's mother we would do the same and lay them out in piles, after grandma across the road passed, we added her lost children to the list we mad small arrangements for. Again we loaded into the car and with hers we had a couple of cemeteries to go to, we also had a couple of extra's that we put on the graves of a couple of unnamed babies in the church cemetery.

Sunday after church we would all join at the grandparents house and and have dinner, the adults would play cards or talk the kids would run around the farm but the over all feeling was being thankful for the family we had around us. Never in my life have I considered an expensive trip to the lake or out of town unless it was going home to tend my families graves.

My son turn thirteen this year, I have found out that a local cemetery is providing flags and asking people to come out and place them of the graves of the veterans buried there so this year, he and i are going to place flags on the graves of those that have served our country, if recent storms had not of destroyed my rose bush we would be adding flowers to those that do not have them. I will explain it to him and maybe next year we will have flowers to add to the flags.