Memorial Day Memories

From before the time I was born my family had the tradition on Memorial Day of going to the cemeteries and decorating the graves of family. Then in the afternoon the the Hall Family (my Mom was a Hall) would meet either at a park or at an Aunt's house for a picnic lunch. This carried on until after my children were raised and Mom and Dad had passed away.

Every time I go to the Springville cemetery on Memorial Day, I am reminded of the last Memorial Day before Dad died. I will always have the image in my mind of Dad as he walked around the cemetery trying to find his Dad's grave. It was a very hot day and Dad was tired and confused by not being able to find it. I had never paid attention to where it was, but had just gone where Dad did, so I wasn't any help. Finally, while still holding the potted mum, he just sat down on one of the headstones to rest. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. We never could find it that day.

The next year Mom and I went to the caretaker and asked him where it was. I wrote down on a piece of paper so I wouldn't forget. "Go to Perrero and it is straight down from there." So, when Gary and I were putting flowers on the graves of my grandparents and aunts and uncles, he asked me where my grandpa Anderson's was. I told him, "You go to Perrero and it is straight down from there."

Dad's Mom died when he was just 14 and is buried in a little cemetery in McKinnon Wyoming. A few years after she died, Grandpa married a woman who we knew as "Aunt Mary." I wish I knew the details of how it all got arranged, but I don't. All I know is that it was an "arranged" marriage set up so Grandpa wouldn't be alone out there in McKinnon. This was her third such marriage and I guess she "made no bones" about the fact that she had only loved her second husband. They eventually moved to Springville, and my grandpa died when I was just four and she died a few years later. If any family member reading this remembers more than me, please add to the story.

I have only a vague memory of Aunt Mary, but I have many memories of hearing about how she wasn't very nice to Grandpa and did nothing to encourage his children or grandchildren to come around. At a reunion we went to a few years ago in McKinnon one of the cousins said they used to call her "Bloody Mary."

Because of those stories, when it came my time to decorate the graves, I decided I would just put a flower on the side of Grandpa. Not very nice, I know. Then I decided that I better repent. After all, I really didn't know her story. I can only imagine how hard it must have been to move out into an isolated area of Wyoming and marry a man you didn't know.

Not that it really matters or that she really cares.
But it made me feel better, anyway.
See, I put the flower right in the middle.