Memorial Day and New Traditions

I think it is tough to have a holiday tradition with a very small family. I wish for a big picnic feast or parade. When I was a child (yes, back in the sixties!) we put crepe paper on our bikes and rode in the Memorial Day parade to the cemetary. Our bike baskets were full of lilacs and we would put them on the graves of relatives. We would ride in the parade with our friends but at the end, we would go with our families and wander through the cemetary that my great-grandfather helped start.

There were veterans walking in the front of the parade but the first one was always a very old man riding in the oldest fire truck our small town had. He wore his uniform with the big flat brimmed hat and stood in the truck because he was too frail to walk the 1/2 mile to the cemetary. My grandfather had fought in WWI but this man was really old. My grandmother said he fought in the Spanish American War (1898).

On the anniversary of the 100 year founding of the cemetary, my grandmother read a poem she wrote about when she was a little girl marching in the parade. The old men in uniforms were from the Civil War. I am still looking for the poem but she was in her nineties and was the last living child of one of the founders of the cemetary. It was a huge day for her and I remember how proud she was to have her family there.

Now I live in my husband's community. It has taken me awhile to figure out why I feel out of sorts on days like today. Yardwork doesn't feel right, we have a VERY small family. Five. So it was time to start a new family traition. We went to the cemetaries and took pictures of the tombstones of my husband's ancestors. We are going to make a family tree for our son with pictures so he better understands where he came from. It is a start. But still not a parade with red, white and blue crepe paper in the spokes of his bike.