The Keepers of the Graves

Memorial Day is celebrated on the last Monday in May and is a way our nation honors those individuals who have died in our nation’s wars. The holiday’s origins go back to the civil war (1865) when graves were decorated to remember those who died in battle. While honoring our military is still the primary focus of Memorial Day, today the holiday is also an opportunity to remember and decorate the graves of family and friends.

As a child, I can remember my mom and grandmothers carefully covering mason jars in aluminum foil, filling them with water and then stuffing the vases full of lilac and honeysuckle blooms. We would then carefully count out the bouquets to make certain we had the correct number and load the vases into cardboard boxes to be transported out to the cemeteries. My family always had flowers placed on the graves a day or two before Memorial Day. I think this was so that our loved ones’ graves looked nice and were tended to prior to all the people visiting the cemetery to also deliver flowers and honor their loved ones.: Lilacs,

My family is buried in two cemeteries in the Bitterroot Valley, one on the outskirts of Stevensville and the other at the Florence Carlton cemetery outside of Florence, MT. I remember going to these cemeteries with my parents and grandmothers to place our Memorial Day flowers. There was always a discussion about who was buried where and how we were related to the people buried under the rows of tombstones in our family area of the cemetery. These were not sad visits to the graves, but ones filled with stories and remembrance. In Florence, MT on Memorial Day our family would attend a buffet luncheon hosted by the Rebekah Lodge. I remember how exotic it was to be eating a turkey dinner at a time other than Thanksgiving or Christmas. Our table was always full of grandparents, cousins, and great aunts and uncles. The adults visited and us kids drank our body weight in punch. After the meal, we would drive through the cemetery and talk about how nice everything looked.

As my grandmothers passed, my mom and dad became the sole keepers of the graves. With each passing year, there were more vases loaded into the car on Memorial Day and fewer people to decorate the graves.  A couple of weeks after my mom’s funeral in May 2019, my dad and I decorated the graves at both cemeteries.  Making sure the graves had flowers was important to my dad and at the time, I did not know it, but it would be his final time decorating the graves in the Bitterroot Valley.  I remember driving him back to Miles City with me the day after we decorated the graves, and we stopped again in Florence to see my mom’s grave and have the same conversation about how nice the graves looked that we had had the day prior.

This year is the first year that I have no living relatives in the Bitterroot Valley. Everyone who kept the graves decorated and looking nice has passed. I came remarkably close to making the 7-hour, one-way drive back to the Bitterroot this weekend to lay down flowers and tend to the graves. However, my heart just is not in it. Going home is still hard and it is awful to arrive in your childhood hometown and have no family left. My family and I visited our parents’ graves in August and left flowers. We were back home for my aunt’s funeral, and it was another reminder of time marching on. I have made several gravesite visits, as has my brother and oldest son to deliver flowers to my parents’ graves. The lack of flowers on my family’s graves this year is not an indication of not missing them all terribly. 

Despite not being in the Bitterroot for Memorial Day this year, I still plan to honor my loved ones who have passed. Instead of visiting their graves, I will be spending time with family, cooking family favorite meals, and going on a drive to find sandhill cranes. I will also reflect back on the past Memorial Days filled with lilacs in aluminum foil vases and the Rebekah Lodge in Florence.  I hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend and if you are a keeper of the graves, God bless you.