Irises are usually blooming for Memorial Day.
When I was a child, Memorial Day was a special holiday. I'd lost an uncle in WW II. Another uncle as well as my dad served, too. Back then my dad drove a Ford Country Squire station wagon that was blue with wood on the sides. My mom and aunt, grandmother and I would fill the back with Mason jars full of irises, peonies, lilacs and anything else that was pretty and blooming in the gardens. Then we'd drive to an old cemetery, one with 3-4 foot high statues and memorials.
It was like a church service as we placed the jars, not only on service members graves but also on those graves of anyone in the family we'd lost--or on those plots of lost one in our friends' families. And then we'd say a private prayer.
That evening, we had a picnic with family, sharing memories and making new ones.
Memorial Day was important. It meant remembering and family and history and prayer.
Hoping your Memorial Day is filled with all of those too.
Copyright 2014 Karen Rose Smith
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