It’s Memorial Day weekend and the Lilacs are in full
bloom. Every time my eye spies the
beautiful lavender flowers, anytime my nose discerns their sweet smell, I’m
fill with nostalgia. This time of year
is always a busy one in Iowa. Farmers
diligently sow the seeds of corn and soybeans.
Graduates march to the beat of Pomp and Circumstance. And everyone else stocks up on graduation
cards and makes the rounds to all the open houses, sampling the tastiest each
has to offer before moving on to the next.
My Mom just described to me her strategy for last Saturday’s stream of
parties: punch at the first house,
dinner at the next, and dessert at the final stop of the night. Small town life is a guarantee to know enough
graduates each year to make such parties a permanent event on the May
calendar.
The nostalgia around lilacs and this time of year also
carries over to the namesake of this long weekend. I grew up observing Memorial Day in the most
traditional sense. It didn’t mean
shopping the incredible sales, or kicking off the summer with a camping trip or
a bbq. Our family celebrated this
holiday with observance.
My Grandma Erb would drive her big Ford conversion van to
school the week before. All the
grandkids would load up and she would navigate the gravel roads of Boone County
to take us to an obscure cemetery. There
was a farm gate across the entrance, and wild berries growing in the fence
row. She would discharge us to place
little American flags on each grave that had a military marker. The American Legion provided the flags, and
Grandma provided the manpower. She was
an expert overseer, taking the job of decorating the graves of heroes very
seriously. Once every hero had been
honored, we would load up and repeat the process for the cemetery next to my
Grandparents’ farm. We were rewarded
with popsicles when the work was done.
Grandma continued this tradition for nearly twenty years, and thankfully
had grandchildren great enough in number and range to provide manpower through
that time period.
Grandma wasn’t the only one who made preparations for
Memorial Day. My Mom would walk the yard
with mason jars, picking lilacs, peonies, snowballs… Whatever was in bloom would be turned into an
arrangement to decorate the graves of our ancestors. We’d load up the car and drive from cemetery
to cemetery across three counties. Each
stop was a treasure hunt, trying to find the stone with our ancestor’s
name. The reward at the end was hearing
my Mom tell a story or two about that person.
How her Grandma Norem’s kitchen always smelled of something freshly
baked; how her Grandma Whattoff was a jolly woman who loved to laugh, was a
meticulous housekeeper, and ALWAYS wore a corset. We would place our mason jar floral
arrangement beside the other freshly placed arrangements before moving on to
the next cemetery.
The weekend would end with exhausted bodies and hearts
overflowing. The connection I felt with
these ancestors of mine who worked hard and loved well inspired me to do the
same. And the bond our extended family
shared through honoring those who came before us was strengthened with each
passing year.
There are three new graves to honor this year, which makes
me want to hop in the car and drive from Colorado back to Iowa to visit that
precious ground…to instill appreciation and memories into my own children. But we’ll settle for the storytelling piece
of the tradition, which just happened to be my Grandpa Whattoff’s
specialty. What a perfect place to
start.
