MEMORIAL DAY-PRESENT

When my dad’s last of three sisters, my dear Aunt Doris, died in 2007 I promised to visit the Fulton cemetery yearly. I was the last link in Fulton. She would be buried next to her two sisters and spouses and her devoted husband in Battle Creek Memorial Park. Atop the lonely hill near Fulton, surrounded by Michigan cornfields, the graves of my grandparents and their two sons, one an infant, one a war hero, would rest alone.

Before my Aunt Doris died my Memorial Weekend visits turned up sporadic, but now…I promised. And it’s not just the Fulton cemetery. My husband, Tim, and I visit my Uncle Bob at Ft. Custer National Cemetery…with American flags standing straight and tall on every site, and sections filling up rapidly with dying veterans. At the huge beautiful Memorial Park cemetery I used to explore on bicycles with Rosie, we visit “the aunts,” my mother and wonderful step-father, and assorted relatives. And after Fulton it’s on to Athens, another small village where my mother grew up and my maternal grandparents are buried. We call it the Cemetery Run.

I organize The Cemetery Run like the well thought out lesson plans of my teaching days. I tenderly plant blazing red geraniums in a dozen pots, remembering each loved one as I write their name on the bottom.  I place each pot in the back of the van in sequence of visited cemeteries on the route. I clutch a folder full of directions and maps because we always seem to lose our way in the multiple sections of Memorial Park and the back roads between Fulton and Athens, causing me to admire my Grandpa Martens even more who drove those roads every day on his rural postal route.

My Aunt Francie, my mother’s youngest sister, joined us this year and when she found the Memorial Park gravesite by accident of her husband’s best friend, she entertained us with stories of how my Uncle Bob and his buddy, Harold, were always getting into mischief. When caught shooting beebee guns at birds, Harold’s mother made them kill flies for the rest of the day. Harold was a medaled Marine dying in the Pacific in 1944.

Driving on to Ft. Custer Cemetery, Aunt Francie recalled the summer of 1948. “Everyone was getting married.” The guys who did come home from the war were finding waiting girl friends like my Aunt Francie or my cousin, Mary; or newly widowed women, like my mom who married my step father, home from the Pacific. His brother also married a war widow that summer.

At the entrance to Ft. Custer, I pulled out my camera. The entrance boulevard is framed in what seems like hundreds of ten foot flagpoles just feet apart. Crisp, fresh flags fly forever free. Like my lesson plans I always wrote in pencil to accommodate last minute changes, we encountered the first glitch in this year’s Cemetery Run. The Memorial Day Ceremony was taking place when we turned onto the boulevard of flags and too many cars marred any visible photo opportunity. We also needed to drive unplanned miles to a back entrance, thoroughly messing up my Mapquest route to Fulton!

But visiting Uncle Bob, nestled with all those other war veterans was worth it. Aunt Francie told of the tradition of many of her grandchildren and their children helping to place the flags on each grave the day before. How the little ones would dodge care freely between the flags, but remain solemn when their parents stood and recalled stories of their Granddad.

At least in Fulton, I rationalized, I could get some planned for pictures of the clean gravestones! Dark black with algae and grunge, the names on the graves had been barely visible the year before. After web research and trips to a camera store for the Internet mentioned Photo Flo, Tim and I felt we could clean those graves to a sparkly almost new appearance. We did with loud booming thunder keeping time to our scrubbing strokes. The grime disappeared but the storm did not. Just making it to the van, huge drops pelted my Cemetery Run folder and me! No picture here.

Wind gusts whipped the rain sideways as we drove slowly into Fulton, needing to make a quick traditional drive down Artmartin Street. By now the wind was blowing signs sideways while leaves and branches bombarded the window shield. Just pass the four corners of Fulton we decided to stop near the front of the church where I was baptized and my dad’s memorial service was held. Observing the chaos of whipping rain, tumbling branches and limbs and dangling power lines, the three of us knew this was no ordinary thunderstorm. (We later heard winds were clocked at 80 mph right in the vicinity where we parked.)

Finally the wind abated and we inched forward through the subsiding raindrops. But it was very slow going on those country roads outlined by sheared branches and uprooted trees, their root systems pulled totally from the ground, covered in mounds of dirt taller than us. At one point we stopped to ask a man standing in shock on his front porch if he was okay. A massive pine once soaring above his two story farmhouse lay fallen between house and barn, cutting off any visibility between the two.

It seemed each gravel road we tried had more downed trees or power lines than the previous. We kept turning around, turning back.  We gave up getting to Athens, but then we spent the next two hours just getting back to Battle Creek. Even the interstate was slowed and stopped. Schedules and routes abandoned, like erasures and arrows on my lesson plans, we said prayers for safety and the dazed people we encountered standing in roads and on porches. The memories of loved ones still embraced and enriched us whether they received their geranium or not. And God still was with us as He so artfully reminded us on one of the pictures I did manage to take:

MEMORIAL DAY-PAST

As a lucky child of the Fifties, my childhood was somewhat carefree. With black and white Westerns on our new one channel television serving as models, we built a ranch on one side of the two car garage. My best friend, Rosie, and I rode our bicycles for miles, after all they were our “horses.” We rode through the twisty paths of the local cemetery, stopping at the pond to catch tadpoles in mayonnaise jars. And yes, we did stay out until the street lights came on.

I say somewhat carefree because I knew I was different. I was a war orphan, my last name did not match my mom’s and in the Fifties that was a big deal. And on Memorial Day I didn’t picnic or watch parades, or even get together with Rosie at our ranch. I went to the cemetery with my mom and my Grandma. We’d share a picnic at a roadside table along the way. Grandma would make deviled ham sandwiches with tiny pickles chopped so finely that even I, a non pickle lover, didn’t mind. Or maybe I didn’t mind because it was just so good to be with Grandma and Mom and hear them talk about my dad.

On the drive to the cemetery, they’d share memories of Mom and Dad dating during high school, his baseball prowess, going to Lake Michigan after Prom (called the Junior/Senior Dance in 1939.) Mom would talk about living in Biloxi with Dad during the summer of 1943, in a tiny one room cabin with no air conditioning. “But we didn’t care, we were together.” Grandma would point out neighbors on the cemetery road who knew Dad, or were on my Grandpa’s postal route. Even as a child, I was never bored on those trips. I soaked up every memory of Dad they were willing to share.

We’d turn down the gravel road, outside the tiny village of Fulton and drive to the top of the hill; nestled under two huge pines (gone now) was North Fulton Cemetery and the Martens family plot. My name certainly fit it there! Fulton must have been founded by a Martens or a Snyder. It seemed every other marker carried one of those names. Mom and Grandma were reverent and quiet as they dug flower holes around the graves of Grandpa, Dad, and a still born infant brother. The brand new American flag the V.F.W. placed every year waved above Dad’s marker. I loved trudging over to the pump for water, sloshing it over my tennis shoes.

Later we would drive into Fulton, turn down Artmartin Street (named for Dad, but spelled wrong) and stop in front of his home. Mom and Grandma would spend a few minutes remarking how it had changed, remembering the wrap around porch everyone loved.

Driving through the village, we’d slow down at the bigger cemetery on the south side of town. They’d remind me of the Memorial Day I was asked to place a wreath on the World War II Memorial. About age ten, I remember especially my white patent shoes and anklets, how carefully I walked down the cement steps surrounding the Memorial, making sure I wouldn’t slip.

My husband, Tim, my Aunt Francie, and I will make the trip to Fulton again this Memorial Day. How could we not?

NORTHERN MICHIGAN MAY MORNING

This morning the mist hung over the water like a bride’s veil: filmy white, undulating just slightly, teasing us with its obscured mood. Last night the mist caught the waning sun’s rays emitting glittering silver threads like giant spider webs capturing the lake and holding it captive. Later I knew Lake Michigan would return to its waving sapphire smile of spring time joy, released from the mist and yes, released from the crushing winter ice, finally.

Released like the loons who gaggled and whooped and sent up their loony call, too distinctive not to recognize when heard, but certainly impossible to describe with mere words. I felt like Katherine Hepburn racing to announce to Henry Fonda, in On Golden Pond, “The loons are back! The loons are back!” Only in our case, the loons are here! We haven’t seen loons in years.

Understanding the lake still has gifts to give; I turn like a child on Christmas morning to the woods, opening my arms to massive white pines with their deep green needles protecting presents of wildflowers beneath their branches. My shoes crunch on last year’s leaves and fallen twigs. Camera in hand I bend down to capture a wildflower moment. Even they are elusive, asking me to squat and bend awkwardly for just the right angle, capturing really very little of their brilliance.

My feeble attempts to describe, add words, snap a photo, enlarge the moment are overtaken once again by my sensual surroundings. I cannot capture such beauty for long. I can only sense it, grasp the moment inside me long enough to pray and thank God. Yes, thank God for this northern Michigan May morning.

“The heavens declare the glory of God;

The skies proclaim the work of his hands.” (Psalm 19:1)

REMEMBERING...

Eighteen years ago yesterday my family faced the lost of my spouse and my children's father.  Poetry often was, and is, my solace and escape.  Reprinted below are two of my poems from that time in memory of David, still.

NO NIGHTMARES IN MAY
No one thinks dark in May
with
bitty buds
sun jewels
cheery chirps
bulging blossoms of hope.

No one thinks sad in May
with
pink proms
lacy weddings
anniversaries
cascading calendars of hope.

No one thinks it's over in May
with
God's forgiveness
God's love
God's eternity
enriching our environs with hope.


SWANS ON THE BAY
I walk by the bay, alone
Sifting through
Sands of sorrow
Grains of grief
Muddling images
Sorting thoughts
I watch the skies
for answers
I listen to the waves
for whys
I whisper to the birch
"If only"

Swans stop me suddenly
Whispering white of down
Resting upon ridged rocks
Illuminating light-lines
Pecking, peeking from the shadows
Deep, dark almond eyes
Reflect, reveal
Hardened bill reaches
Touching, trapping
Elegant, body-grace
Molds, softens
Long, nail-tough beak
Pokes, prods

Swans settle my muddle
I embrace the contrasting comfort
Of sharp, prolonged grief
That pierces my insides
Racking my emotions
Of quiet, peaceful sorrow
That hushes my sobs
Brushes my tears
I know both.