If it were not for my devout Catholic dad taking us to the cemetery every Memorial Day instilling in us that habit, I’m not sure it would remain a habit in me up to this day. Though my Lutheran mother herself values the custom, enjoying buying and preparing flowers for the graves, including my dad’s grave (RIP).
I will start positive and say I am glad to see some people still visiting the cemetery on Memorial Day. It is edifying because going to the cemetery is not exactly a pleasure activity for most Americans vs. just staying home and barbecuing.
I mean, when a person is dead they’re dead, is the contemporary attitude. Why put yourself through the sadness of visiting their grave?
There were not many people visiting when we visited. And the majority were not white. One family was black, another Hispanic, another Middle Eastern, only a few whites. This made me think this is because their ethnic backgrounds still honor the dead in comparison to the white, contemporary Anglo-Saxon, Protestant majority. Just my impression.
Our custom is to swing by Walmart and pick out artificial flowers for each grave, thinking which flowers fit best for each person, picking from the Memorial Day flower display. This year there were very few to pick from in the back of the store. Are people buying less Memorial Day flowers? Going less to the cemetery?
At any rate, I enjoy our Memorial Day tradition. Put artificial flowers at the head of my dad’s grave, and that of my Uncle Mike, Uncle Jim, and Aunt Christa in a section of the cemetery that is unofficially our family plot.
We start the rosary there, praying for the dead, then drive around the bend to a deceased neighbor’s grave, then finish at the top of the hill visiting the graves of priests and religious I knew, placing a small flower for each of them, and finishing the rosary.
There is another cemetery just down the road where we visit the grave of a woman my wife was friends with who died rather young of breast cancer.
It is all very sobering and for me peaceful. It reminds me of what is most important in this life, that is the salvation of our souls when we die.
After we finish we might go out to eat or back home to BBQ. This year we made our own brats, German potato salad, served with sour kraut, BBQ chips, and for dessert cookies and cream ice cream. Before we ate, we prayed again for the dead and those men who gave their life for our country in the military.
May they rest in peace.