Happy Memorial Day!

It’s finally here! One of my favorite holidays, second only to Thanksgiving, Monday will be Memorial Day.

Many people gather with their families for the long weekend. I hope that will be the case with all of you.

Some of my favorite memories are spending Memorial Day weekend at my grandmother’s farm. My family and I lived in Wichita and all of my cousins lived in Missouri so holidays were always get-togethers for the extended family.

There were enough cousins within the same age group to form a baseball team and that was always the first thing we did on the day before Memorial Day, while waiting for supper. The milking paddock was just the right size for a baseball diamond. We would play ball “until the cows came home” for their evening milking.

About dusk, we would all sit on the front porch, well the “gals” would sit on the porch and the “guys” would sit on the rounded roof of the root cellar. As little cousins slid down the inclined cellar door, we older cousins listened to the tales the aunts and uncles told of their own childhoods.

This quiet bonding time included mothers talking about their children’s latest escapades, childhood diseases, and school achievements.

Most of the elders would lament the lack of “pickers” (guitar players), “callers” (square dance callers who would call out the steps for dancers), and “fiddlers” (those who played the fiddle.) There were members of the family who did these things when younger, but declined to reenact their talents for their children. Even my grandmother, who was no small talent on the organ, would decline to play.

What a shame! I hope if you have talented musicians in your family that they attend family reunions with their instruments and play some family favorites and sing-a-longs. Encourage younger children who play instruments in their school bands to learn some songs the older family members will remember from their childhood or youth.

Some of these old songs are still sung in grade schools. “Way Down Yonder in the Paw Paw Patch” for one. My aunt told me this was her favorite song when a child in school and described the game they would play while singing it. I have her on tape singing it and telling about the game.

During all the catching up talk on the front porch, the men would be turning the ice cream churn full of ice and “makings.” What great times! What wonderful memories I have of those days and all of those dear elders who are all gone now.

Of course, Memorial Day was the day we all took flowers to the various cemeteries where our family members are buried. Two of the most frequented cemeteries were created on family land in Cedar and Polk counties and became community cemeteries as time went on. Almost every grave in these two resting places are holding family members.

Showing an early interest in family history, I would follow my grandmother and aunts around each burial place we visited and hear them tell about the people buried there. Although we all know tombstones tell names and dates, it takes elder family members to fill in the life story of all of those deceased relatives.

If you visit cemeteries on Memorial Day, please take any elder relative with you and encourage them to tell you about the people buried there. Remember that Memorial Day isn’t a day to put fancy flower arrangements on graves, it is a time to remember the people there; people who used to be as alive and curious about their ancestors as we are today.

I’ve heard it said that we are not really dead until the last person who remembers us dies. Don’t let your loved ones die! Tell their stories to your children and encourage them to keep those stories alive – keep family ties strong. What better time to do this than Memorial Day!