Memorial Day

Every Memorial Day, my family visits the Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis carrying bouquets of lilacs, lilies of the valley, and planters of flowers to set on the family graves. We mill around on the gentle, tree-covered slope that I have visited almost every spring. I usually scrape tree seeds and encroaching dirt off the gravestones of my grandparents and my great aunt and uncle, and I chat with my aunt and uncle and cousins. Then we leave to go eat brunch.

My mother and uncle have followed this ritual faithfully for more than 60 years, ever since their mother died suddenly when they were still children. It has been one of my favorite family traditions, and my children and husband seem to treasure it even more than I do. This year, I cannot go because of all of my contractions, and I have convinced my husband to stay home as well because he has a crushing workload. Convincing him was not easy. He said it is important to respect the dead.

“Grandpa wouldn't mind if we stayed home this year," I told Ian. "He would think that work comes first. And Mom said that Grandma would be worried about us and would want us to take good care of ourselves.” I said that instead of going to Minneapolis, we should take bouquets of flowers into our house and tell stories about family and friends who've passed on. Then we should all eat a treat. My husband reluctantly agreed to my plan before heading outside with his power tools to modify a calf hutch so that it can be used as a poultry house.

I picked up the phone right away and told my mother the news. What she said made me cry. She said that if Grandpa had been alive, he would've considered skipping the family gathering so that he could come to our place and help Ian. She said that his spirit would not be at Lakewood Cemetery as much as it would be on our farm. He would've wanted to be here, building chicken crates and maybe putting in the garden that I can't imagine that we will actually be planting this year.

He would have loved our old tractor. Mom says that when Grandpa retired from working as a welder, he visited the Smithsonian in Washington DC with his wife Char, who was the only grandma I ever knew. She lost him in that huge museum, and after many hours she found him in the basement, engrossed with display of old farm equipment. He talked about that equipment for years and could remember each piece in great detail. If he could talk to us now, he would have so many ideas for us.

I hurried outside to tell Ian this story, and I found him bending over a power saw with my son. "You're grandpa is not the only one with lots of ideas," Ian said, nodding toward our boy. As Ian slipped on his safety glasses and headed off to rip a board, my child eagerly and earnestly explained the difference between several different saw blades that lay on the deck. Grandpa would have appreciated such things.

So we will be staying home tomorrow. And I will stay home knowing that we are wrapped in a life that the old ones in my family might have appreciated. By loving the land, and by awkwardly attempting to do some of the work that many of them knew so well, I can love even those relatives that I will never know.

And so we will celebrate Memorial Day this year.