Memorial Day

I know this post is actually late, considering that Memorial day has come and past, but this needs to be written, and so it shall be.

When I was a kid, Memorial Day meant that the water parks were going to be open, Dad would fill up the pool, and BBQ season had officially begun. It was marked with the end of school and the start of summer. It didn't mean honoring falling soldiers or remember what our brave men and women have sacrificed to keep our country safe, both within and out.

This past Memorial Day was very different for me. I have only ever been to a cemetery twice.  Once to go with Sharon to visit her father a year after he died, and when I went two months previously to bury grandpa. I have already remarked once on the stark beauty of a military graveyard. All of the pale tombstones lines up perfectly with one and other in every direction is certainly an ode to how our military is organized. When I went the first time, it was a rainy, blustery day; it certainly seemed fitting. But when we went with my grandma to visit on the two month anniversary of Grandpa's passing, it was a beautiful sunny day.

I was wearing my favorite blue sundress that I tied with a bow in the back and comfortable sandals. I thought that maybe if I dressed in something less somber, I would feel better. It was working for a while, until be pulled in the barracks. There were plenty of things to tug at my heart strings. Buried near my grandpa are 290,000+ veterans that date back to the civil war. And every single grave had an American flag pressed into the soil. Outside the gates, firemen had hoisted a ginormous flag on their ladder that flapped freely in the wind. At the gate stood men and women in uniform, smiling as cars entered and left the cemetery.

We wound around the paths that led to Grandpa's stone, and everywhere I could see where flowers had been left for loved one, and people still stood smiling through their tears down at one rounded white stone or another. Dad found a parking space, explaining that Grandpa was "right over there somewhere."

We got out of the car. I carried nine red roses in one hand, and twirled a ring my grandpa had gotten my grandma years ago, and had since given it to me around my finger of my other hand. We started off towards where we thought he was, presuming his headstone hadn't arrived yet. It took us a good ten or fifteen minutes of reading the temporary markers to realize that maybe we were in the wrong spot. But then Dad saw that instead of having a temporary marker, the headstone had been placed over where Grandpa was buried.

I could feel that tight, dry feeling in my throat. It always happens when I am feeling a lot of emotions and want to cry, but I am not ready to let anything out just yet. The headstone was perfect. It was white with a smear of light grey right through the middle of it, with the words "Loving Husband, Father and Grandpa. We Will Always Love You." It made me so sad and so happy to read that.

Of course I knew who my grandpa was. But knowing that it was there for anyone to read; that he was loved and loving, that there were people that cared about him right now, and missed him; that made me feel elated. Sure, when my dad dies, and I die, the people that love and miss him will be gone, but in a cemetery like this, there are going to forever be people there, either working on the ground or just passing through that will see that and know that someone cared about him.

Because that is what death really has people thinking about: how will anyone know I even existed?

Knowing that my grandpa is in that cemetery though, that has been taken care of since the Civil War gives me hope that there are going to be people that will forever know that he existed, and he was important. In a hundred years there probably won't be anyone to put flowers on his grave, but there is going to be someone placing an American flag in the dirt in front of his name. There will be someone trimming the grass, and realigning his headstone and pulling out the weeds.

In a few hours, Memorial day went from celebrating pool opening and BBQ chicken and school letting out. It became what is was really about: celebrating the lives of those men and women who serve our country, protect it, us, and our freedoms, and remember all those hundreds and thousands that have given their lives in all our pursuits of happiness.

I had never felt so proud of my country than I did in that one moment. I placed my roses down on my grandpa's grave and smiled through the sniffles and watched as all the flags turned right and flapped in the wind. There were hundreds of gravestones the mounted the rolling green hill, and while seeing all those certainly signified death, it also signified lives well remembered, lives that were going to be well cared after, and that was something I could definitely appreciate.