rememorial day

It's Memorial Day again.  As a central Pennsylvania girl long before I moved to central Pennsylvania, Memorial Day in Boalsburg is full of history.

This is how we celebrate it now:  my little family joins my mother, father and brother in a trek through the cemetery in Boalsburg putting flowers on the graves of dead relatives.  It involves getting along with those people for at least an hour.  It involves telling my daughters stories of the relatives.  Probably the same stories each year, but since I doubt they are really listening the stories seem fresh.

How we used to celebrate was certainly different.  When the great aunts and uncles, now the beneficiaries of the flowers, were alive the cemetery visit was an amazing adventure.  We'd meet at Anna Nanna's (it was years before I found out her name was really Aunt Anna Mary) sweet little house with the gorgeous garden.  Someone had visited a florist for the beginnings of the arrangements, but so many of the flowers came from Anna Nanna's garden.  Columbines are forever a symbol of this day for me and always make me think of her.  I'm sure my help was less than helpful, so I'd wander about to check out the sheep and their little backyard surrounded by trees and covered in succulent grass.  In any case, what seemed like hundreds of people put together these fabulous arrangements- the floral containers stored in their garage just for this day, as far as I know.  I don't remember how we got the flowers and the people across Atherton to the cemetery, but we did.  Wow, what a big deal to get just the right flowers to the right relative.  In those days, I probably hadn't even known any of the people.  The list was long.  I probably whined and was in a hurry, but I don't remember it as being tedious.

Aunt Anna Mary and Uncle Fred were so interesting.  They were childless, so their house was probably a nightmare for my mother when my brother and I were young.  I remember Anna Nanna as a sweet, little old lady who always wore classic clothing and school marm tie up pumps.   She had this sweet lady voice, but really was tough as could be.  She had a foot pump organ which she eventually allowed my brother and I to play.  She had a gorgeous braided rug that I seem to remember she let me help mend on occasion.  Uncle Fred was interesting.  He was pretty crotchedy and a wealth of bad language by the time I knew him.  I just talked to someone the other day who'd interviewed him years ago.  He was a famous guy in his day.  In my day, he was a bald guy with good stories.

I remember one time at Anna Nanna's when her younger sister, the bold one, was visiting and she and I laid out in the back yard in our bras and underwear.  (I may actually not have been a bra wearer at the time.)  Aunt Ginny was absolutely my favorite.  She was all things cool and sophisticated.  She had gorgeous silver hair and always wore fabulous silver jewelry (definitely my role model for loving silver jewelry) and she knew just the right colors to wear to be gorgeous.  Aunt Ginny and Uncle Dave lived in Pennington, New Jersey for many years.  We'd go visit them every year, stay in their adorable house and go to the Jersey shore for a day trip.  Aunt Ginny loved Fiestaware- which I still love.  Uncle Dave was a jigsaw puzzle man.  We always did puzzles on that trip.  It was awesome when Aunt Ginny and Uncle Dave moved to Boalsburg!  They were so much closer.  I loved visiting them more frequently!

No Memorial Day retrospective is complete without mentioning Aunt Fern and Uncle Bob.  They had a sweet little house next to the park.  For years and years, I'd walk past their house with the wisteria tree and think of them.  (The tree is gone now.)  Aunt Fern was in charge of the annual soup and bread sale in downtown Boalsburg for as many years as I can remember.  This soup thing happens to this day.  We don't usually catch that event any more.  It was on the agenda for many, many years- even after she was gone.  Something about many people's vegetable combined into one and bread slathered in butter is a real treat after the decorating of the graves.  I don't remember much about Uncle Bob and Aunt Fern- they were pretty quiet.  Their only child was run over by a car when she was 16, perhaps that's why they seemed so quiet.

Boalsburg was a big part of my childhood, even though I didn't live near back then.  The great aunts and uncles, the tribute to Memorial Day, the craft booths, the family gatherings, the canons booming, the military museum all were a huge part of my family experience.  Then I got married and moved to Maryland and coming to Boalsburg for Memorial Day seemed too much of an ordeal, so we didn't.  Unfortunately, by the time we moved back to Pennsylvania, all these wonderful relatives were permanent residents of the cemetery.

So now, I bring my daughters to put flowers on the graves of the people I knew and loved who never knew my babies.  Rebecca asked me today at each grave if that person knew I had children.  The answer was always no.  So I told her little stories of each one.  The flowers are not so much for the dead, but for the living aren't they?

This event was made all the more poignant by the discovery of the saddest tombstone of all.  It's actually a beautiful tombstone- dark stone, with a pretty beach scene etched on the right and a coastline with houses on the left side.  A very peaceful tombstone.  The name etched so distinctly in the stone and in our hearts- visible from far away.  This grave site- too new to be covered with grass- is now covered in beautiful flower petals.  Rebecca and I stood there crying as we pulled the petals to decorate the grave of her beloved gym teacher who was much, much too young to leave this world.