Memorial Day is for Families

Memorial days of the past bring back fond memories. I remember my parents taking the clippers to their prized flower garden and making pretty flower arrangements in green styrofoam to leave on the grave sites of my ancestors.

We called Memorial Day "decoration day". Not only for the fallen soliders in war, but for the dead whom we wanted to remember. My parents actions made me love memorial day and made me not afraid of walking around in a cemetary looking at all the head stones as dusk was falling. We would take the special flower arrangements made with love from my parents garden to my grandparents whom I barely even knew. I knew them from photos, but yet I knew them because of the love my parents had for them from the funny, great, silly, sad stories they'd tell me of their lives growing up in a small Utah town. They showed me the love they had for all those who had passed on before us. My parents kept them alive for me to get to know. I cherish the day I can meet them in heaven and know who they are just by stories and by pictures that were so lovely preserved for me.

I will pass this on to my children. Even though we now don't live near my departed ancestors and we live far away from living family, I still want my children to respect the dead and come to know that cemetaries are wonderful places to be in and to look in. We drive up and down the rows on Memorial day as the flags fly in the breeze as they line the cemetary roads. It's an awesome sound as they flutter and wave majestically. I almost want to break into the National Anthem as we drive by. We often get out of the car and just look at the old headstones and try to find the oldest one. We've found some as old as 1840 in our small Southern California town. I want my children to see the past and look towards their bright futures.

Memorial day is a time to get together with families and bbq's with friends and fun times. I love the day off and the time to spend with my family and friends. Each day is precious, but this day is especially great because I can pull out the old photos of family members long gone and not just be the genealogy nut that my family knows I am, but have a real reason to show what memorial day is really for!

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