Annnnnd…she’s back.

I have not abandoned my blogging. I have merely been away, gathering new material. It is so easy! I visited my family.

I grew up in Kansas City, amongst plenty of relatives and family friends. I realize now I was one of the lucky ones – protected from bad-deed-doers and encouraged by those who were good - or at least neutral.

As it was the Memorial Day weekend, it was time to decorate the graves. This has been a tradition and source of some friction as far back as I can remember. My daddy and mother took grave decorating very seriously. (Mother even threatened to haunt us if graves go undecorated.)

Daddy would drive (as long as he could) to a small cemetery in central Missouri next to the church where his parents married more than a hundred years ago. (Well, actually, they didn’t marry in the church. It was extremely muddy from heavy rains, so the minister stayed on his horse, rode up to face my grandparents in their buggy, with the attendants staying on horseback on either side. This gives lie to the notion that weddings need to be big productions.)

So in that cemetery are my grandparents and great grandparents and other assorted relations. But the row that haunts me is five or six children who died in the 1918 flu epidemic. They are buried side-by-side next to their mother; the woman who was the midwife who helped deliver my father. (Whew! Now that’s a “house that jack built” sentence.) She survived, and later asked my father to put a red rose on her grave every year. He did, and now my cousins do. But there are only five of us left who know the story. Eventually, her grave will go undecorated on Memorial Day.

In Kansas City we visit two cemeteries. Various relatives, family friends, dear ones – scattered through the parks and the best we have to go on is, “I think grandpa is over there by that bush.” Sometimes the cemeteries have staff members with clip boards and hand-held radios to help you look for your loved ones, sometimes not.

The ground is always hard. It’s usually hot, always inconvenient. The Dollar Store flowers barely stick into the dirt.

And yet. And yet. There is my Uncle Bob and Aunt Nema and her mother. He was grievously injured in WWII, injuries that defined the rest of his life, yet all his headstone says is his name, dates of birth and death, and “World War II Veteran”. He was so much more than that. So much braver and more complicated, living at least 30 years longer than anyone expected.

He’s the one who built wooden ramps under his trees so the squirrels could come up to his porch for Vanilla Wafers and Blue Diamond walnuts (he said they could tell the difference if he bought the cheaper brands) and not get their feet wet. It’s true. I saw it. He also left cookies and nuts at the base of another tree where the squirrels were “shy”.

Aunt Nema was born prematurely, kept warm on the open door of the oven, where the warmth of the pilot light was enough to keep her alive. Her stepfather propositioned her on the way home from her mother’s funeral. She left immediately, turned out of her home to make her way by herself. And she did.

My grandparents are in the other cemetery. They died on consecutive Fridays in the spring of my Junior year in high school. My grandfather died first and when my grandmother was told she said, “I’ve lived 53 years with him. I’ll not live a week without him.” And she didn’t. She died of a broken heart. Literally. It ruptured.

And we visit my godfather who lived just a few doors down from my mother in “the old neighborhood”. He was the first man daddy met when he moved to Kansas City and ultimately introduced daddy and mother – but that’s another story for another time.

He went around the world four times as a cook in the Merchant Marine in the war – one of the most dangerous things to do because the ships were unarmed and juicy targets for the Nazis. I have the Bible his mother gave him before he left for war. It is inscribed “for my dear son”- and I have a photo of him in his dress uniform. So proud and so impossibly young.

He married a young woman who lived next door to my mother. She ended up being  my godmother – funny and sassy and loving, she essentially raised her much younger brother because her mother was often ill.

And then there is the row that holds my mother, my daddy, and my brother-in-law. I’ve written about my parents – so unique and loving, but full of puzzlements that still bear discussing.

My brother-in-law was killed in a car accident. He was an adult-sized elf. He had twinkling eyes, vastly talented with guitar and banjo, interested in everything. He could identify trees and stars and bird songs. He even forced a hyacinth to bloom early so that he could greet me at the airport with, “Hiya, Cynth”. A lovely man, gone too soon.

And there I am at these graves, sweating with my cheap silk flowers that are hard to stick in the ground. This year, my sister stayed in the car because she cannot walk, and her daughter did the bending and wire-sticking. We talked a little about each of these dear ones. Visited with them. Spent a little time. How brave they were in their lives, in their own ways.

It is a good thing to decorate graves.