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.
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