Day of memorials

Driving back into Wenatchee yesterday I passed the city cemetery and noticed not only the rows of small American flags fluttering in the evening breeze but also the neat bouquets of flowers placed on the graves throughout the grassy field. And as I thought how nice it was that people still decorated the graves for Memorial Day, I remembered how much that used to be a part of my Memorial Day weekend each year. My elder relatives always said they doubted people would do the decorating for many more years. It's a tradition that has dropped in priority.

We used to have two decorating days -- one with each side of the family. With my mom's side of the family, all the graves were at the local cemetery, and all the flowers were from my grandma's garden and yard -- peonies, iris, bachlor buttons, columbine, snowballs and cedar branches. Branches of the Hawthorne tree were clipped for decorating, and one grave of a young relative from long ago always was the only grave to receive a type of small yellow flower, like a multi-petaled buttercup. Grandma always said it was this relative's favorite.

As we walked around the cemetery, Grandma and Mom always knew where each person was buried, and there was a little conversation with those who had passed on. We would fill the coffee cans with water from the spigot and then make a nice arrangement from the pile of flowers that Gram had brought in from the farm in the big trunk of her Olsmobile. It was also a day for instructing about the family tree, learning about family ties and seeing the legacy.

On my dad's side, we often would travel the few miles to the next town and clear the graves of any weeds and debris. On some of the older graves, we would have to fill the coffee cans of flowers with water and hike into the woods to the clearing with the concrete markers. Some of these old graves had impressive headstones, with ceramic photos affixed to the fronts and the years of life chiseled into stone. Many of the gravesites were raised with small concrete platforms. Inside the edge of the grave, about six inches wide and a foot tall, was a covering of white rocks, probably quartz. I recall one year we worked all weekend to replace the rocks with a board covered with a green plastic outdoor carpet -- it sort of looked like Astroturf. It did make the graves look a lot nicer.

No matter where I was or who I was with as I traipsed through the cemeteries carrying flowers for departed relatives, it was a day about remembering. It's been many years since I did that, and it's not really something I am fond of doing now. My views of cemeteries have changed, and I don't visit any more. Just because I don't go to place flowers doesn't mean I don't remember. But, yes, it does look nice.

-- Wenatchee, Wash.