Decoration Day

Monday is Memorial Day and Warren and I, like many others around here, will observe it in part by visiting area cemeteries in which his and my family members are buried.

Memorial Day grew out of Decoration Day, a direct result of the Civil War. That war touched every town in every state east of the Mississippi River (and some beyond). Small wonder: almost 10% of the nation served in the respective armies of the North and South. Some 20% of the soldiers serving, 2% of the nation's population, died in that war. Decoration Day began officially in 1868 to commemorate the war dead, and it still officially honors all those who died in wartime in service to this country.

In this part of the country, central Ohio, many families still observe Memorial Day, although we tend to treat it as a family holiday rather than a military remembrance. It is a time to head to the cemeteries, clean the graves, talk about the family buried there, and put out bunches of flowers. Boy scouts and veterans groups will beat many of us there to make sure fresh flags are in the war markers of the veterans.(Local history being what it is, local markers go all the way back to the Revolutionary War.)

We will arrive bearing flowers and trowels and, in some cases, statuary or balloons for the graves. In some ways, Memorial Day is as close as we, mainstream white Ohioans that we are, come to observing Dia de los Muertos. We do not feast at the cemetery, but we celebrate our deceased family members by remembering them at this time of year.

Decorating the family graves is a tradition my mother, father, and I observe together and one in which Warren has joined. One of the cemeteries we will visit is a large, open cemetery a ways from town, where my sister and my dad's parents are buried, and where someday my parents will be too.

At that cemetery, my parents and I have lots of friends, both dead and alive. Although that cemetery dates back to the late 1800s, a large section of it has been opened and used since 1950. My parents bought a plot there in 1955, when they had to bury their baby daughter, and bought their own plots at the same time. My dad's parents bought the plots next to them.

Over the years you get to know who's there in a cemetery and who their family is. Nearby is John Link, a close friend of my dad's, who died of cancer in his early 20s. My friend Laurie's dad is buried in the next section over; Laurie and her mother have probably already been out there this weekend. Denny and Marlene Schultz, whose friendship with my parents started back in high school, are just around the corner. Denny died a number of years ago; Marlene just a month ago. There is a little feeling of Our Town in that cemetery sometimes and I wonder how Marlene, who had a wonderful, bubbling, giggling laugh, would do in the setting that Thornton Wilder imagined.

We visited this cemetery a lot as I was growing up; it was on the route to or from my grandparents' farm out on Hogback Road. Although I didn't realize it then, I can appreciate now how much my mother must have missed her baby, who had died suddenly at three months. While my parents took the time to clean the headstone or just stand silently, arms around each other, we kids would use the time as opportunities to explore the nearby graves. Visiting the cemetery was not a macabre experience but a natural part of the rhythm of my childhood.

One of my favorite grave markers of all time is in that cemetery. I must have read it a hundred times as a kid and still always stop and read it every time I am out there. I will read it Monday, in fact. It is the stone for Alfred Livingston, who died in 1911 at the age of 70. Alfred Livingston was a sergeant with Company D, 121st regiment of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and his stone proudly notes that he fought at Chickamauga, marched with Sherman to the sea, and marched in the Grand Review of the Armies in D.C. at war's end. The 121st was organized in Delaware, so I suspect that he was a local farm boy who went away to war.

I have often wondered what stories Alfred must have had to tell when he returned at the war's end. I wonder whether he participated in any of the veterans reunions, and whose memories he marked every year on Decoration Day. I like that his marker notes what must have been the greatest adventure of his life.

This weekend, the cemeteries all around here are full of family members pulling weeds and planting flowers. Some of the small towns in the area will hold Memorial Day parades and observances in the local cemetery. All of those ceremonies will include a recitation of the Gettysburg Address, because that is what you do on Memorial Day around here.

Monday, Warren and I will visit his parents' grave and make sure the flags are in good order. They both served in World War II: Art in the Army and Ellen in the Red Cross. Later in the day, I will clip Ellen's peonies, which are in full bloom right now, and we will join my parents, with their own bunches of peonies, and decorate the family graves in other cemeteries.

Decoration Day has taken on some different meanings since its official start in 1868, but here we are, 141 years later, still carrying our flowers and our memories to the cemetery on Memorial Day, and still looking after our dead. I think Alfred Livingston would approve.