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When I was growing up, I spent a lot of time with grandparents, especially my mother’s parents, who lived just outside the small town of Danbury, Iowa. I always stayed with my mother’s parents on Memorial Day weekend. Although the particular order of events might change from one year to the next, the general tradition was the same: assembling the necessary list of appropriate grave decorations, cleaning supplies, and basic landscaping tools for several work sessions at the two local adjoining cemeteries for the Monday holiday that my grandmother always called “Decoration Day”.

My grandmother was as particular about her work at the cemetery as she was about her house – meticulous. We pulled and sprayed for weeds, trimmed back overgrown grass, used brushes to remove dust lodged in marble crevices, scraped off what the birds so disrespectfully left behind on headstones, and even shined up some with Windex. Once cleared and cleaned, we wired down wreaths and floral arrangements so the wind wouldn’t blow them away. My grandmother’s goal each year, never missed that I can recall, was to have this work completed by Sunday, so, when visitors came to the cemetery, many from out of town, the family graves were looking their best.

While this tradition only included me for several years at the beginning through the sheer coincidence of my being there, my grandmother came to count on my help. Of course, children love to be needed by the adults who care for them, so questions about exactly why we always took on this project each year and in the manner described, didn’t occur to me until I was approaching my teens. But by the time such questions occurred, I also realized many of the answers on my own. Also by then, I’d learned some history (not much, unfortunately), but had some vague idea that this holiday weekend had something actually to do with lost members of the military. And I began to notice there were a number of graves in that small town cemetery which had an extra stone placed in the ground on the grave site, noting the military service of the deceased gentleman who was buried there. Each year, I’d notice more and more of them, in fact, and I’d pause and contemplate a bit about each, noting that many of the local farmers had served in and survived two World Wars and some, Korea and Vietnam. Over the years, I did see some graves where the headstone and military marker indicated the person had died in combat.

I know some people mark Memorial Day as the kick off of their summer fun. It’s a three day weekend – time to hit the golf course, the campgrounds, or dust off the barbeque grill for the first time. Those summer kick-off ceremonies and even my grandmother’s cemetery project, which have both become part of this weekend tradition, seemed to have obscured the focus.

It wasn’t until this Memorial Day weekend that I finally wondered: Why did my grandmother call this holiday Decoration Day? In discussing the email Linda had forwarded with a number of images, including the two above, we discovered we’d both grown up hearing this holiday referred to in the same way. And neither of us knew why.

The term Decoration Day would’ve become common for my grandmother, actually, through her parents, who, in turn, would have learned it from theirs. The tradition of decorating fallen soldiers’ graves, Wikipedia reports, although predating the Civil War, actually became common throughout America in the several years following that war, particularly after a number of official ceremonies and events that occurred in 1868.

Near the turn of the twentieth century, the term Memorial Day came into use, but the official national holiday name was not actually changed until 1967.

Perhaps my grandmother’s parents, or one of their families before them, began the practice of visiting the cemetery to decorate a loved one’s grave who had fallen in the war, and that’s how the tradition ultimately grew. Obviously, my grandmother’s family was not alone. And to be sure, care and decoration of a loved one’s grave is a sign of respect. It’s a lesson I certainly learned in my many years of helping to care for extended family members’ graves alongside my grandmother.

I am just sorry that the original meaning of the whole exercise got lost along the way. All of this makes me wonder…have I done a good enough job of teaching my children about this day? It’s probably a good idea to have a chat about the whole subject when the Dawdy family sits down for our traditional Memorial Day meal – cooked – yes, on the grill.

Certainly, many of these have been seen before – they have been much forwarded around on email. Impossible, though, to say we’ve all seen them too many times.

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” ~ The Gettysburg Address, 1863

~  All gave some, some gave all  ~