Memorial Day

It's not quite Memorial Day yet, but I'm heading for the graves today with my grandmother and aunt. Glad to get it over with a day early, and can spend Monday in peace.

I can stand the visit. I don't get depressed or start thinking about my mortality. I do that anyway on occasion, but going there doesn't bring it on. And I certainly don't want to forget those who've passed on, but for the ones I've known, I would rather remember their lives than where the bones rest. I don't know about an afterlife, but wherever they are, they're not there.

Which, considering how my mom felt about geraniums, it's just as well if she doesn't look in on her resting place. For some reason, geraniums appear to be the flower of choice. I see some pansies, too, and a few other things. Well, you have to go with what's blooming in New England at this time. And my nana likes geraniums best because they're hardy and practical and can be taken and planted in your yard after the deceased (and their visitors) are through admiring them.

When I remember my mother, I remember her reading. I remember how she taught me love of reading. Not just by reading to me, but by making time in her day to read her own books. I had to amuse myself while she was doing something she clearly enjoyed. When I was older, I was busy with my own reading. We had different tastes. She liked Regency romance, I like mysteries. When I was a child, I read the classics -- Little Women, Treasure Island -- which she had read a long time before. And contemporary children's books-- The Phantom Toll Booth, A Wrinkle in Time, etc, which didn't interest a middle-aged woman.

But we both liked humor. Sometimes, in romances and mysteries, there are funny parts. One of us was always finding the other one, finger holding the place, to read a passage. Like in a Charlotte MacLeod mystery where the main character's cousin, who's looking after an eccentric(and rich) elderly relation, tells her about the old man's plans to clean up Boston Common. By providing diapers for the pigeons. The cousin rants that it's the old man who thinks up these things, but it will be him out on the Common holding talcum powder and chasing after pigeons. My mother ended up reading a few of MacLeod's mysteries.

We took turns reading some humorous books out loud even when I was well into my teens: Erma Bombeck, Jean Kerr, Phyllis Diller, Sam Levinson, P. G. Wodehouse. There where more, but these were our favorites.

So, when I go out to the cemetery tomorrow, I'll be thinking about how to place the flowers so they don't tip over. I'll think about the dead when I'm doing or seeing something that they would have enjoyed.