The trunk in my mental attic has many memories of Memorial Day. It was commonly called Decoration Day because people put flowers on the graves of the deceased.
It was a big deal to my elders’ generation. Mother and our dear neighbor, Gertrude Scovell, worried that their pineys (peonies) and flags (irises) wouldn’t bloom in time. Bill’s mother fussed about who would take flowers to his father’s grave in Kalamazoo. Bill’s dad started the cemetery which he cleverly named . . . wait for it! . . . Mount Ever Rest. (Yes indeed!) Bill earned money for college by selling cemetery lots.
Cemeteries never gave my family the heebie-jeebies. Mother loved to stroll through Glen Clove Cemetery in Knightstown, commenting on the inscriptions and those buried there. When I was a young woman my sister, Christine, and I rode bicycles there. We’d coast down the hill with our feet in the air, shouting “Wheeeee!” Mother and my stepfather did their courtin’ in old cemeteries throughout central Indiana.
When I was in 5th grade I wanted to join the band. Since I had bailed out of piano lessons, my parents refused to buy me an instrument. The band conductor loaned me a baritone, sort of a miniature tuba. On Memorial Day we marched to Glen Cove. To my eternal mortification, my cape came unfastened so that I had to hold it on while managing that big instrument and marching out of step. That ended my band career!
When I was a high school Senior Joyce Skaggs, the Government teacher, dragooned me into reciting “In Flanders Fields” at an American Legion ceremony that included a rifle volley and the playing of “Taps.” I was embarrassed since I have absolutely no talent either for writing or reciting poetry.
Vick came down from Angola to attend Christine’s funeral. She has become a fervent amateur genealogist and was determined to visit the cemetery on the Old Home Place that my ancestors pioneered near Michigantown in Clinton County. We rushed home after lunch at St. Rose and changed clothes.
We stopped at the cemetery south of Michigantown where Granny’s ancestors are buried. The fresh air was redolent with the scent of fresh clover, and the quietude of that country place was enhanced by the inscription on my devout great-grandmother’s tombstone, “Asleep in Jesus.”
Then we drove to The Old Home Place, the true North of my grandfather Kelly’s people. The house and its round barn are gone, but up on a wooded knoll above Wildcat Creek lie the ancient ones about whom Mother told the stories that had been passed down.
I sat on a tombstone while the soothing hush and gentle light of the gloaming descended upon me and brought me a sense of being in an oasis of tranquility in a hurtful world. I felt a renewed sense of connectedness with both those from whom I sprang and with my daughter as I watched her forge her own connection with our people and find her place in a story that never ends. We have returned with some of our cousins.
The old cemetery needs attention, lest it disappear. Many of its tombstones are tilting or sinking into the ground. Vicki sawed down a little tree that blocked an inscription. “I guess I have a right to tend my ancestors’ graves!” All of the tombstones of a pioneer cemetery in Irvington are gone. Rust is attacking the long iron fence at Glen Cove and will eventually destroy it.
Cemeteries are more than depositories of the dead: They represent respect for our ancestors, our family histories and trigger memories. Historic Knightstown is sponsoring a drive to paint the fence. Since at least 20 of my relatives are buried there, I’m sending a donation to the Historic Knightstown Cemetery Fund C.O. the Knightstown Citizen’s Bank. That’s the least I can do! wclarke@comcast.net