Memorial Day

I'm writing this the day after Memorial Day. I was visiting my mother just before Memorial Day so it made sense for us to decorate the graves of our relatives while I was there. The graveyard is on a steep hill and the road there is not well maintained. I was going to drive my mother and some of our relatives to the site but in the end, my uncle drove us in his Jeep.

The top picture shows my mother next to the grave of my father. We put flowers right in front of his side of the marker (to stay out of the way of the grass cutters - if they ever show up!) so you can't read that my father was in the Royal Air Force (Great Britain's Air Force) as a corporal during World War 2. You can see that flags of the United States were put at the grave sites of US veterans in preparation for Memorial Day but my father doesn't get a flag because of his having been in a foreign armed force. I thought about getting a British flag and placing it there but I don't think he would have wanted that. When he became a naturalized citizen, he became very patriotic for his adopted country and wouldn't have wanted a foreign flag flying among the US flags. He loved England and Wales (where he was born) but felt there was a time a place for everything.

The second picture shows my mother next to the grave of her first baby. He would have been my older brother. My parents were married during the war but my father had to go back to England after they were married. My mother had a very difficult time during her pregnancy and the baby only lived for a short time. My father wasn't able to be there to help her during that time and when the baby died, there was nowhere to bury him so my grandfather (my mother's father) bought a number of plots in this cemetery, where he would be buried 16 years later, and gave one to my mother for "Johnny", the brother I never knew.

The next picture shows my Aunt Betty and Uncle Dave working on my grandfather's grave site (my grandmother has a separate marker to the left outside the picture). As you can see from the flag, Grandpa was a veteran, too. He was a US Marine and fought in World War 1.  Uncle Dave was a Marine, too, and it's nice that he is helping take care of my grandfather's grave. He helped us all out by trimming the weeds that had grown up around all the family's markers. This picture shows the steepness of the hill where the graves are located. In this part of Pennsylvania, flat ground is hard to come by so you put a graveyard where you can. The flatter land goes for farms and homes and, now, for shopping malls.

One nice thing about having a graveyard on a hill, though, is that you also get a nice view - if you're just there visiting. My last picture shows what you can see from this spot. For a few minutes, you can look around and appreciate the beauty of this world that God created for us and allows us to use. But it's all temporary. Afterwards, we go back to our daily routines and much later we come back to this place or one like it as we journey on to our final destination.

My thanks to all the veterans and also to their families who suffered in different ways.