Second Thoughts on Memorial Day

Actually the previous blog occurred the Thursday before Memorial Day. Then on Saturday, Cathryn and I visited the graves in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. This also was an annual occurrence when Roger and I were children. At an agreed upon time in the morning, we would meet Aunt Lura's family and sometimes my cousins Mickey and Geri. People would stand around and talk while Grand (my grandfather) would clip grass around the headstone of his son Thad and putter with some of the flower bushes he had planted there. After about 15 or 20 minutes we would all leave. Nothing particularly significant seemed to happen there.

Yet when Cathryn and I visited the spot, it seemed to become very significant to me. There are now more headstones there. Grandma and Grand have theirs and Mom and Dad have theirs. Reading their headstones somehow affirmed and validated who I am. There were the names Leslie N Barkdull and Louisa T Barkdull. I knew them! They were very significant to me when I was alive. There were Ralph N. Kirkham and Mary Barkdull Kirkham Call. They were my parents who literally and partially figuratively made me who I am. And then there was Thad Barkdull, my uncle whom I never knew. But we visited his grave for many years when I was a child.

At the age of 70, childhood is long ago. Yet it was real, and very significant. Visiting the site of the graves of those who made it so, renewed those old "ties that bind" and reduced the many years between to but a moment.

First Thoughts on Memorial day.

I should tell you about Memorial Day. Cathryn and I decided to go to Garland, Utah and Bancroft, Idaho. (Where? Why? Who?)

In both our childhoods we traveled distances to commemorate Memorial Day. My family went to Garland where my Great Grandmother Smith lived and where her son-in-law, Nathan Kirkham and two of his children are buried. Other family members must also be buried there, because we often saw several aunts and uncles and great aunts and great uncles there.

When Cathryn and I visited the cemetery, we only decorated the graves of Nathan Kirkham, Clara, his wife, and their sons Reed and Ray. I noted that Reed was just an infant when he died, but Ray died one year after his father at the age of 10. My dad, Ralph, was just 13. What tough times that must have been for him, his younger sister, Melba, and his mother, Grandma Clara!

Now that I think about it, I need to investigate whether Great Grandma Smith and her husband are buried there. Probably they are.

Garland was on the way to Bancroft on interstate highway 15. We went there to decorate the graves of Cathryn's birth mother Louise and her grandparents Louie and Willard Call. Louise died when Cathryn was 6 year's old. We put bright yellow mums on her mother's grave and darker red mums on her grandparents' graves. The yellow mums stood out among all the other few flowers that were there on a rather cold, wet day. "Now your mother's grave lights up the whole cemetery," I said. We shed a few tears.

Having lived most of our married life outside of Utah, we rarely had opportunity to celebrate Memorial Day and never in Garland or Bancroft. Our traveling to those places this year therefore was quite special, something we had not done in over 40 years.