Decoration Day, part 2...

As we walked and talked, my friend PC was telling me about growing up in Iowa, and spending time with her grandmother going to the cemetery and taking flowers to leave in remembrance. She said her grand mother took actual plants and would put them out around the graves of loved ones. That this grandmother often, on holidays would make the effort to go to the cemetery to visit. Always on Christmas, on decoration day, and other times when she would want to go and commune with the departed.

I remember many times as a child going with my grandparents to cemeteries. To visit people they were related to in towns far from home, but also making the trip to go to visit in cemeteries and be reassured that the grave sites of parents, family  interred for eternity were neat, tidy, in good repair, being cared for.  One side of the grandparents' families, my maternal grandmothers people, were from the eastern edge of the state, and the granddaddys' folk: from the western edge. So its pretty unlikely that they would find each other, fall for one another, and end up creating a family that included my mom. Coming from such different places geographically back in that era of early nineteenth century, it is hardly believable that they would end up in a little town in south GA, where my mom met my dad and created another generation: making my brother and: me!

 We both commented on how people are so geographically distant that does not happen  much any more. But I think it is due, in equal part, to the fact that people are not willing to make the effort. They just get involved, wrapped up in so many other things, they do not choose to make time in their lives for remembering and re-visiting the past. People stay so busy with daily activities and immersed in things that are more immediate, they do not stop to reflect and remember.

I've long had this saying/thought that 'if you don't show up (for the committee meeting, lunch date, (assignment of choice), opportunity for service) people think you don't care'. I think this might apply to visiting the cemetery as well. I know there are as many reasons to not go as there are people, but ultimately it is a choice. I love to go to family gatherings that have been happening in recent years in east Georgia, especially on the Sunday of that weekend in June. When we all trek out into the woods, on a little spit of land, surrounded on three sides by a man-made lake. Where the forebears are safely interred. On a hill, overlooking the old home place, now under the water of Clark-Hill reservoir. Family members go and make sure it is well maintained, road is clear, trash from random beer drinkers is picked up. And ready for the group - usually numbering fifty or more -  to come and have a picnic lunch, sit under the pines and hardwoods, remembering....