On Mother’s Day, my sister posted a picture of herself with our mother on a social media site. Her comment was, “Mommy. Wish we had just one more Mother’s Day.” Our mother laid down to sleep on June 9th, 2010, and though the intervening nine years have dulled the pain, there is the occasional spike, such as the one that I felt when I saw my sister’s post. I get a rush of memories that batter my heart, and I am briefly rendered inconsolable. And now we are on the cusp of two days of remembrances: The 103rd running of the Indianapolis 500, and Memorial Day.
Though I have lived in Indiana for a total of 22 years – with the last 6 in the Indianapolis area – the tradition of spending time watching cars go ‘round at the Speedway was not one that I had embraced. I partied with those who invited me, and watched the cars go zoom on TVs that tape-delayed the race. In 2008, when I lived in St. Louis, Missouri, my best friend’s husband invited me to attend the “Big Whoosh” with his bride and a cluster of friends; I did so that year, and the following two. We partied, we did, and my remembrances of the race are tied to the man and the woman who were my friends. They enjoyed the race, and I enjoyed their company. I still have the lanyard and the tickets to the race, the last of which is dated 2010, the year Bill Davis was diagnosed with the ravaging cancer that would claim him in 2012. When I touched his dead neck, and woke his bride to tell her, I did not consider that he had died 37 days before the 96th running of the race he had so loved to attend.
In 1868, John A. Logan, the leader of the Grand Army of the Republic, designated May 30th as a day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of our country during the late rebellion,” a day which became known as “Decoration Day.” In her 1913 memoir, Logan’s wife, Mary Cunningham Logan, wrote that she had suggested the idea for the holiday, having been touched by “the little flags and the withered flowers” she had observed being laid on the graves of Confederate soldiers in Petersburg, Virginia. Decoration Day gradually became known as “Memorial Day,” and in 1971, became an official federal holiday. On the Thursday before Memorial Day, in a tradition that began in 1948, members of the Old Guard place small American flags on the graves at Arlington National Cemetery.
The Memorial Day that many of us observe is one of celebration for having the day off from work, and an opportunity to party and barbecue, preferably outdoors. We may pause, briefly, glancing up from our food to our television sets as a camera pans past the rows of graves adorned with the little flags. Amen; let’s eat. That is how I observe Memorial Day.
I’ve been to my father’s grave once, since he was buried, and that was during a search for the grave of my father-in-law. I have a picture of my mother’s niche, taken when she was first interred. I’ve not returned, nor have I ever been to the graves of my two younger brothers. My memorial days are triggered, not by the last Monday in May, but by the warm stones of memories with which the living had gifted me, the remembrances of the days we shared when we were alive, together.
cjon3acd@att.net