Memorial Day

I hope everyone was able to set some time aside for Memorial Day on Monday.

For me, Memorial Day was time to remember and visit some of the family no longer with us. I visited their graves in Jamestown and Edgeley, left some flowers and shed some tears. Memorial Day isn't exactly my favorite holiday, to me it seems more sad than anything, but I wouldn't feel quite right if I didn't acknowledge it.

When I see the final resting spots for some of my relatives, a lot of memories come back all at once - I remember my Grandpa Max flying his Ultralite and my Grandma Barb making cookies. My Grandma Betty, she was kind of the brash grandma, I remember her smoking and cracking jokes. My Grandpa Roger died when I was 12, so my memories aren't quite as clear with him. They usually center around his funeral and how that was one of my first experiences with people dying.

And then I come to my Great Grandma. A writer, she always had something laying around that she had just written, be it a poem or short story. Something that jumps out right away is the story she told me one day about how she smashed a chicken's head on the stairs outside her house. The head cracked open (it actually was a kind of violent story, looking back on it now) and she gobbled up what was inside - and that was how she became so brainy. She always had stories like that, and she always told them right after she 'forced' her latest kuchen or plate of cookies or bars on you (she was that old-school German type of person who believed you were only taken care of when you were fed frequently...I didn't mind). Amazing lady.

She's beside my Great Grandfather, a man I never got a chance to really meet as he passed away around the time I was born. So not really knowing the man, I always wonder what kind of conversations he had with my Great Grandmother. Or if he sat back and marveled at the stories she told, much like I did.

I think about them often, miss them often, but for the most part I only visit their final resting places one day a year. Even though I like to remember the good times, it always seems I turn to them no longer being here and how much I wish they still were.

Maybe that is a big part of Memorial Day. You remember those who are no longer with you, and that leads to an appreciation for those who still are. Like my wife, who came with me yesterday and held me up through the day and drove the car away from the cemetary after I was the one who drove there. Nothing worse than a fat guy crying, I guess.

Or my dad, who also popped by to see his own mother and father, grandmother and grandfather. I got a chance to see his new air seeder and the new farm cat and we talked a bit about how many pheasants and deer are probably going to be around the farm this fall. Simple things, things that I love talking about.

Anyway, I hope you got out and got a chance to talk with those that don't necesarily have a voice anymore. They'd love to hear how things are going and what's going on in the world.