Rituals of Memorial Day

Post date: May 29, 2017 4:06:02 PM

Creating memories and linking generations through the rituals of Memorial Day

Every year I buy a variety of plastic flowers to decorate family graves. It is a tradition that seems as much a part of May as shopping for graduation cards or thinking about gathering family and friends for a picnic or cookout. It is also very much a ritual for many families in the Midwest, especially for those who still have a grandmother or great aunt—someone who knows the family history and the significance of the names on the tombstones.

As a little girl, several generations of my family got together every Memorial day weekend and it usually took several vehicles to get us all to Turner Cemetery, the little country cemetery on a narrow gravel road off T-47, going towards Garwin. Then we would go to Dobson cemetery, which is next to the little Carlton Brethren church that my mother once attended.

We had a few additional graves in what my mother called the Pioneer cemetery, just off the gravel road leading to Nellie’s farm and the schoolhouse on the corner where my mother once taught. I went there with my daughter Mikki a few years ago and marveled at the age of the tombstones there: it’s tiny, with fewer than two dozen graves but dates back to the Civil War era. On either side are farm fields and the lane leading to the cemetery is lined with quite a few trees, so there is a strange other worldly sense walking back to the cemetery of walking back in time.

Each Memorial Day was both a celebration of our family’s stories and history and a chance to get together. We would sometimes go to eat at the Maid Rite in Tama afterwards or go back to Marshalltown to a restaurant or go to someone’s house for a simple meal. It was also a chance to take a bucket, some rags, some Windex or bottled water and physically clean up the tombstones of our loved ones. Generally there weren’t any weeds around our family’s tombstones, but if they had dared make an appearance, they would have been tended to rather promptly.

I can still picture Grandma Nellie walking around, wearing her little housedress, a light sweater, and a chiffon headscarf tied around her face. She was a small person but a good supervisor! Great grandma Eva went along for some of those trips as well.

Little ones would run around looking at the different stones and asking questions; Grandma Nellie or one of the Aunts would patiently walk around and point to different stones and tell us something about the person buried there.

After all of the flowers had been distributed, all of the stories told, and the bucket of cleaning supplies had been put back in the car, there was one more part of the ritual--taking pictures of the family behind the tombstones.

Later, when I was a newly married young woman, my husband and I purchased our own set of five plots for $75.00 and so did other cousins and my sister. Once, my mother and her two sisters were walking around and discussing where we would all be buried someday, and fretting that we should have purchased additional plots. One of my older cousins, Lee, whispered to me, “Just wait—they’re going to ask us to lie down and see if we all fit!”

As the years passed, Grandma Nellie and Great Grandma Eva passed away, and if not for my mother’s notes and family history notebooks, their stories would be lost to us. And then my mother died in 1997, and I felt that loss doubly on that first Memorial Day. My father went with us for many more Memorial Days, and my sister Cathi, cousins Charlene and Anne, and Aunt Jeanne and I continued the tradition.

When my father died and was buried beside my mother in 2013, I remember feeling a tremendous burden being passed to me: I had been given all of my mother’s photos, notebooks, and big family history books, with stories about each one of our ancestors.

After the graveside service had concluded, I walked around the stones near my parents’ graves and told my great niece and nephews about the people buried nearby. Then, their father, my nephew David, who had done such a wonderful job with the service, walked up and said quietly, “Listen to your Aunt Cherie. She’s the storyteller now. She knows our family history.”

I started to say, “No, that’s my mom!” but then I realized he was right: the title of story teller had been passed to me. So, I have read through my mother's stories and I've scanned in a number of her pictures. Last fall I wrote up my mother’s story for a book of essays about mothers (We are Our Mothers’ Daughters). Now I am at work on an essay about my two grandmas—Nellie and Eva, technically daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, but more like mother and daughter. I watched them tend our family graves as a little girl; I saw them walk around and talk about the people buried there.

I’ve looked at their photos and read my mother’s notes on both of them: both endured loss, heartbreak, loneliness, estrangement, separation, poverty and hard work. Yet both had the sweetest spirits, smiles, and an abundance of affection, unconditional love, and acceptance. I took special care this weekend to pick the prettiest flowers for my parents, my grandma Nellie and great grandma Eva.

I didn't have to clean off their stones this year: the rain did that for me. The gathering was smaller, but I was thrilled that my best friend from childhood, Beth, was there with me--she had driven up from Kansas City to fulfill her own promises to decorate some family graves in the same small country cemetery. Our husbands chatted as we walked around, she holding an umbrella over my head, decorating graves and talking about the loved ones buried here. We took pictures; the ritual was completed as we shared a meal in Marshalltown and caught up. My sister Cathi joined us for a few minutes making it all the more special.

I am part of the fifth generation of my family to be born and live in Iowa: as I learn more about those who came before me, I feel very blessed to walk in their footsteps. I have so many wonderful memories of Memorial Days and decorating the family graves: it is a ritual that I will continue to observe!

Last updated May 29, 2017