Memorial Day-2011

     When I was a child in Illinois, we would get together with my grandmother each Memorial Day and visit all the cemeteries of deceased relatives to put flowers on their graves.  At each grave site, she would explain the relationship to us...at a young age, all I was really concerned with was the picnic of fried chicken, potato salad, chocolate chip cookies and lemonade waiting for us as soon as we got to the park on a bluff above the Mississippi River.
      Now that I am much older and my grandmother is now one of the visited grave sites, I wish I had paid more attention to what she was telling me!!!  I no longer live anywhere near where we would go, but my brother faithfully carries on the tradition, with even more sites to visit.  It is not meant to be a sad time....just a remembering time....but a tradition that I don't think the younger generation will probably carry on with, considering our mobile society.

Our little country cemetery in Illinois

     We visited DC in 2002 for the first time and the daily honoring of the grave of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery is most impressive.

Arlington National Cemetery-Washington, DC